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FIFTH AVENUE 






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MASSIVE AND SPLENDIDLY (iOTIilC IS ST. TIIOMAS's. THE 
CHURCH DATES FROM 1825. IN 1 867 THE PRESENT 
SITE WAS SECURED. AND THE BROWN-STONE EDIFICE 
OF THE EARLY SEVENTIES WAS FOR NEARLY TWO 
GENERATIONS THE ULTRA-FASHIONABLE EPISCOPAL 
CHITRCII oi-- THE CTTV" 



FIFTH AVENUE 



BY 

ARTHUR BARTLETT MAURICE 

Author of " New York in Fiction," " The New York of 
the Novelists," " Bottled up in Belgium," etc. 



DRAWINGS BY 

ALLAN G. CRAM 




NEW YORK 

DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 

1918 



COPTRIOHT, 1918 

By DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, Inc. 



OCT -i ;bi8 



r^ 






FOREWORD 

In the making of this book the author has drawn 
from many sources. First, for many suggestions, 
he is indebted to Mr. Guy Nichols, the hbrarian 
of the Players Club, whose knowledge of the city 
is so profound that his friends occasionally refer 
to him as " the man who invented New York." 
The author is indebted to the Fifth Avenue As- 
sociation and to the invariable courtesy of those 
persons in the New York Public Library with 
whom he has come in contact. 

Among the books that have been consulted are, 
first of all, the admirable monographs, '* Fifth 
Avenue," and " Fifth Avenue Events," issued by 
the Fifth Avenue Bank. From these he has 
drawn freely. Among other volumes are " The 
Diary of Philip Hone," Ward McAlhster's " So- 
ciety as I Have Found It," George Gary Eggles- 
ton's " Recollections of a Varied Life," Matthew 
Hale Smith's " Sunshine and Shadow in New 
York" (1869), Seymour Dunbar's "A History 
of Travel in America," Miss Henderson's " A 
Loiterer in New York," William Allen Butler's 
" A Retrospect of Forty Years," Fremont Rider's 
"New York City," Francis Gerry Fairfield's 
" The Clubs of New York," Anna Alice Chapin's 



FOREWORD 

"Greenwich ViUage," Theodore Wolff's "Lit- 
erary Haunts and Homes," Rupert Hughes's 
" The Real New York," James Grant Wilson's 
" Thackeray in the United States," Mrs. Burton 
Harrison's "Recollections, Grave and Gay," 
Abram C. Dayton's " Last Days of Knicker- 
bocker Life in New York," and Martha J. Lamb's 
" History of the City of New York." Also various 
articles in the magazines and newspapers. 



n 





CONTENTS 




CHAPTER 

I 


The Shadow of the Knickerbockers 


PAQK 
1 


II 


The Stretch of Tradition . 


. 29 


III 


A Knickerbocker Pepys . 


. 41 


IV 


Glimpses of the Sixties . 


. 60 


V 


Fourteenth to Madison Square . 


. 78 


VI 


Some Great Days on the Avenue . 


. 100 


VII 


Some Avenue Clubs in the Early Day 


s 125 


VIII 


Literary Landmarks and Figures . 


. 150 


IX 


Fifth Avenue in Fiction 


165 


X 


Trails of Bohemia .... 


183 


XI 


The Slope of Murray Hill . 


199 


XII 


Confessions of an Exiled Bus 


211 


XIII 


A Post-Knickerbocker Petronius 


226 


XIV 


The Crest of Murray Hill . 


244 


XV 


Giant Strides of Commerce . 


255 


XVI 


Beyond Murray Hill . . . . 


266 


XVII 


Approaching the Plaza . . . . 


285 


XVIII 


Stretches of the Avenue 


297 


XIX 


Mine Host on the Avenue . 


312 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

" Massive and splendidly Gothic is St. Thomas's. The church 
dates from 1825. In 1867 the present site was secured, 
and the brown-stone edifice of the early seventies was for 
nearly two generations the ultra-fashionable Episcopal 
church of the city " Frontispiece 

FACINO 
PAQK 

The Washington Arch. A splendid sentinel guarding the 
approach to the Avenue. Beyond, houses dating from the 
thirties of the last century, that mark the beginning of the 
Stretch of Tradition 14 

At the northeast corner of the Avenue and Tenth Street is the 
Episcopal Church of the Ascension, built in 1840, and 
consecrated November 5, 1841. It belongs to a part of 
the Avenue, from the Square to Twelfth Street, which has 
changed little since 1845 32 '' 

Madison Square. Yesterday it was the home of the Flora 
McFlimsies of the William Allen Butler poem " Nothing 
to Wear." Today, in the eyes of the Manhattanite, it is 
the centre of the Universe 68 ^ 

" The Tower of the Metropolitan Building. Whatever artists 
may think of it the tower is, structurally, one of the won- 
ders of the world. Exactly halfway between sidewalk and 
point of spire is the great clock with the immense dials " 86 , 

In the bright sunlight the Avenue glitters with the pavillions 
of patriotism. Old Glory may be counted by the tens of 
thousands; England's Union Jack, and the Tricolour of 
France by the thousands. To forestall the Kaiser the 
Avenue is "coming across" 112 y 

Where the Avenue and Thirty-fourth Street cross stands the 

building popularly known as the Knickerbocker Trust Com- 

' pany. Here, in the middle of the last century, " Sarsa- 

parilla " Townsend built in brown-stone, and A. T. Stewart 

later built in white marble 136 

"At the northwest corner of Fifty-fourth Street is the Uni- 
versity Club, to the mind of Arnold Bennett ( ' Your 
United States ' ) , the finest of all the fine structures that 

line the Avenue" 172 ^ 

ix 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



rxciNa 

FAGK 



" The site of the old Lenox Library is now occupied by the 
house of Mr. Henry C. Frick, one of the great show resi- 
dences of the Avenue and the City. A broad garden 
separates the house, which is eighteenth century English, 
from the sidewalk " 218 

The terrace of the Public Library. Today the spot is the 
scene of the activities of those engaged in the work of 
speeding America's Answer. Once it was far uptown, and 
on the eastern side of the Avenue were the residences 
known as " Spanish Row," or " The House of Mansions " . 248 

Commerce, with giant stride, is marching up the stately Avenue. 
The story of a business house that began in the neigh- 
bourhood of Cherry Hill, migrated to Grand Street, thence 
to Broadway and Union Square, and again to the slope 
of Murray Hill, is, in epitome, the story of the city itself . 260 

" On the site of the old Croton Reservoir the cornerstone of 
the Public Library was laid November 10, 1902, and the 
building opened to the public May 23, 1911. To it were 
carried the treasures of the Astor Library and the Lenox 
Library" 268 

Entrance to the Public Library. The Library, 590 feet long 
and 270 deep, was built by the City at a cost of about nine 
million dollars. The material is largely Vermont marble, 
and the style that of the modern renaissance . . . 274 

" O beautiful, long, loved Avenue, 
So faithless to truth and yet so true." — Joaquin Miller . 280 

South of where " St. Gaudens's hero, gaunt and grim, rides on 
with Victory leading him," may be seen the Fountain of 
Abundance, and, in the background, the new Plaza Hotel . 290 

The Metropolitan Musexun of Art, on the site of what was once 
the Deer Park, had its origin in a meeting of the Art 
Committee of the Union League Club in November, 1869 . 304 



FIFTH AVENUE 



FIFTH AVENUE 

CHAPTER I 

The Shadow of the Knickerbockers 

The Shadow of the Knickerbockers — An Old-time Map — The 
Beginnings of the Avenue — Watering Place Life — The Beach 
at Rockaway — Coney Island — Newspapers in the Thirties — 
Early Day Marriages — The Knickerbocker Sabbath — Home 
Customs — Restaurants and Hotels — The Leather-heads — Con- 
ditions of Travel — Stage-coaches and Steamers — The Clipper 
Ships — When Dickens First Came. 

Boughton, had you bid me chant 
'Hymns to Peter Stuyvesant. 
Had you bid me sing of Wouter. 
(He! the Onion-head! the Doubter!) 
But to rhyme of this one-mocker. 
Who shall rhyme to Knickerbocker ? 

— Austin Dobson. 

Before the writer, as he begins the pleasant task, 
is an old half -illegible map, or rather, fragment 
of a map. Near-by are three or four dull prints. 
They are of a hundred years ago, or thereabouts, 
and tell of a New York when President Monroe 
was in the White House, and Governor De Witt 
Clinton in the State Capitol, at Albany, and Mayor 
Colden in the City Hall. To pore over them is 
to achieve a certain contentment of the soul. 
Probably it held itself to be turbulent in its day 
— that old New York. Without doubt it had its 

-i-1 -i- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

squabbles, its turmoils, its excitements. We 
smile at the old town — its limitations, its incon- 
veniences, its naivetes. But perhaps, in these 
years of storm, and stress, and heartache, we 
envy more than a little. It is not merely the 
architectural story that the old maps, prints, 
diaries tell; in them we can find an age that is 
gone, catch fleeting glimpses of people long since 
dust to dust, look at past manners, fashions, 
pleasures and contrast them with our own. 

But to begin with the old map. The lettering 
beneath conveys the information that it was pre- 
pared for the City in 1819-1820 by John Randel, 
Jr., and that it shows the farms superimposed 
upon the Commissioner's map of 1811. Through 
the centre of the map there is a line indicating 
Fifth Avenue north to Thirteenth Street. Here 
and there is a spot apparently intended to repre- 
sent a farmhouse, but that is all; for in 1820, 
though Greenwich Village and Chelsea were, the 
city proper was far to the south. Some of the 
names on the old map are familiar and some are 
not. 

Just above the bending lane that ran along 
the north side of Washington Square, then the 
Potter's Field, may be read " Trustees of Sailor's 
Snug Harbor." The land thus marked extends 
from what is now Waverly Place to what is now 
Ninth Street. In 1790 Captain Robert Richard 

-*-2h- 



THE SHADOW OF THE KNICKERBOCKERS 

Randall paid five thousand pounds sterling for 
twenty-one acres of good farming land. In 1801 
he died, and his will directed that a " Snug Har- 
bor " for old salts be built upon his farm, the 
produce of which, he believed, would forever fur- 
nish his pensioners with vegetables and cereal 
rations. Later Randall's trustees leased the farm 
in building lots and placed " Snug Harbor " in 
Staten Island. Above the estate, in diagonal 
form, and at one point crossing Fifth Avenue to 
the west, was the large farm of Henry Brevoort. 
More limited holdings, in the names of Gideon 
Tucker, William Hamilton, and John Morse, 
separate, in the map, the Brevoort property from 
the estates of John Mann, Jr., and Mary Mann. 
The latter must have been a landowner of some 
importance in her day, for the fragment of a 
chart runs into the margin above the line of 
Thirteenth Street without indicating the begin- 
ning of any other ownership. 

On the land to the west of the Avenue hne may 
be read " Heirs of John Rogers," " William W. 
Gilbert," " Nicholson " (the Christian name lies 
somewhere beyond the map horizon), and "Heirs 
of Henry Spingler." Irrigation is indicated by 
a line, running in a general northwesterly direc- 
tion, bearing the name " Manetta Water," while 
a thinner line, joining the first line from the 
northeast, is described as " East Branch of 

-J- 3 -J- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

Manetta Water." Manetta Water was the Eng- 
lish name. The Dutch had called it " Bestavaer's 
Rivulet." It was a sparkling stream, beloved of 
trout fishermen, rising in the high ground above 
Twenty-first Street, flowing southeasterly to Fifth 
Avenue at Ninth Street, then on to midway 
between the present Eighth Street and Waver ly 
Place, where it swung southwesterly and emptied 
into the Hudson River near Charlton Street. It 
ran between sandhills, sometimes rising to the 
height of a hundred feet, and marked the course , 
of a famous Indian hunting ground. 

The joy of the Izaak Waltons of the past is 
occasionally the despair of the Fifth Avenue 
householders of the present. Flooded cellars and 
weakened foundations may be traced to the purl- 
ing waters of the sparkling stream. But perhaps 
the trout were jumping. Then the last fisherman 
probably worried very little about the annoyances 
to which his descendants were to be subjected. 
In much the same spirit we are saying today, 
" What will it all matter a hundred years hence? " 

Beginning at the Potter's Field, the line of 
what is now Fifth Avenue left the " Road over 
the Sandhills " or the " Zantberg " of the Dutch, 
later known as Art Street, long since gone from 
the map, and crossed the Robert Richard Randall 
Estate. Thence it ran through the Henry Bre- 
voort farm, which originally extended from Ninth 

-*- 4 -<- 



THE SHADOW OF THE KNICKERBOCKERS 

to Eighteenth Streets, and which had been bought 
in 1714 for four hundred pounds. Crossing the 
tributary stream at Twelfth Street, it passed a 
small pond between Thirteenth and Fourteenth 
Streets, and then ran on, over low and level 
ground, to Twenty-first Street, then called 
" Love's Lane." To the right was the swamp and 
marsh that afterwards became Union Square. 
Following the trail farther, the hardy voyager 
wandered over " hills and valleys, dales and 
fields," through a countryside where trout, mink, 
otter, and muskrat swam in the brooks and pools ; 
brant, black duck, and yellow-leg splashed in the 
marshes and fox, rabbit, woodcock, and partridge 
found covert in the thicket. Here and there was 
a farm, but the city, then numbering one hun- 
dred thousand persons, was far away. Then, in 
1824, the first stretch of the Avenue, from 
Waverly Place to Thirteenth Street, was opened, 
and the northward march of the great thorough- 
fare began. Let us try to picture the old town of 
that day, the city that was still under the shadow 
of the Knickerbockers. 

First, at the southern extremity of the island, 
was the Battery and Battery Park. When, in 
"The Story of a New York House," the late 
H. C. Bunner described the little square of green 
jutting into the waters of the upper bay, it was 
as it had been some years before the earliest 



FIFTH AVENUE 

venturesome pioneers builded in lower Fifth Ave- 
nue. From the pillared balcony of his house on 
State Street — the house may still be seen — Jacob 
Dolph caught a glimpse of the morning sun, that 
loved the Battery far better than Pine Street, 
where Dolph's office was. It was a poplar- 
studded Battery in those days, and the tale tells 
how the wind blew fresh off the bay, and the 
waves beat up against the sea-wall, and a large 
brig, with all sails set, loomed conspicuous to the 
view, and two or three fat little boats, cat-rigged, 
after the good old New York fashion, were beat- 
ing down towards Staten Island, to hunt for the 
earhest bluefish. That was in 1808, and sixteen 
years later, the Battery, with its gravelled, shady 
paths, and its somewhat irregular plots of grass, 
was still the city's favourite breathing spot. There, 
of summer evenings, after the stately walk down 
Broadway, the crinolined ladies and the beaux 
with their bell-crowned hats gathered to watch 
the sun set behind the low Jersey hills, and per- 
haps to inspect the review of the Tompkins Blues, 
or the Pulaski Cadets. There was fierce rivalry 
between these two commands, one under Captain 
Vincent, and the other under Captain McArdle, 
and each corps had its admiring sympathizers. 
Both Blues and Cadets presented a fine, martial 
appearance as they swung across the Battery, 
marching like veterans who had faced fire and 



THE SHADOW OF [THE KNICKERBOCKERS 

would not flinch. " Sure it was," a flippant 
chronicler has recorded, " both had an undisputed 
reputation for charging upon a well-loaded board 
with a will that left no tell-tale vestige." Very- 
likely, in the throng, all were not of New York. 
There were doubtful strangers, too, looking with 
yearning eyes out over the dancing waters of the 
blue bay — swarthy, weather-beaten men with huge 
earrings. They called themselves " privateers- 
men." But there were those who smiled at the 
word, for romance had it that there were still 
buccaneers in the Spanish Main. 

In many families that daily visit to the Battery 
was all the summer change. Mr. Dayton, in his 
" Last Days of Knickerbocker Life," informed 
us that neither belle nor gallant lost caste by 
declining to participate in the routine of watering 
place life, simple and inexperienced as it then 
was. Yet there were summer resorts, and they 
were patronized by the best and most prominent 
citizens of the country. The springs at Saratoga 
had already been discovered, and there were many 
"New Yorkers who made the then long and ardu- 
ous trip. 

But nearer at hand was the " Beach at Rocka- 
way," sung by the military poet, George P. Mor- 
ris, and Coney Island. At the latter resort condi- 
tions were primitive. Unheard were the blaring of 
bands, and the raucous cry of the " Hot-Dog 

-H- 7 -J- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

man," and the riot and roar of the rabble. Mr. 
Blinker, of O. Henry's " Brick Dust Row," could 
not then have seen his vision and found his light. 
For there was no mass of vulgarians wallowing 
in gross joys to be recognized as his brothers 
seeking the ideal. But he might have been as 
well pleased with the unpretentious hotel at the 
water's edge, where the urbanite could enjoy the 
cooling ocean breezes, and listen to the waves, 
and dine upon broiled chicken and succulent clams. 
The press of the third decade of the last century 
was high-priced and vitriolic. Of the morning 
papers now known to New Yorkers there was 
none. The " Sun," the first to appear, began in 
1833. But of the afternoon journals there was 
the " Evening Post," perhaps even then " making 
virtue odious," as a wit of many years later was 
to express it, and the " Commercial Advertiser," 
now the " Globe," the oldest of all metropolitan 
journals. Before the appearance of the " Sun," 
the morning papers had been the " Morning 
Courier and New York Enquirer," the " Stand- 
ard," the "Democratic Chronicle," the "Journal 
of Commerce," the " New York Gazette and Gen- 
eral Advertiser," and the " Mercantile Advertiser 
and New York Advocate." In the evening there 
were the " Star," and the " American," besides 
the " Post " and " Commercial Advertiser.'* 
These newspapers were mere appendages of party. 



THE SHADOW OF THE KNICKERBOCKERS 

" organs " in the narrowest and most restricted 
sense, espousing blindly certain interests or ideas, 
expounding in long editorials the views of small 
groups of politicians. 

"Here's this morning's New York Sewer! 
Here's this morning's New York Stabber! Here's 
the New York Family Spy! Here's the New 
York Private Listener! Here's the New York 
Peeper! Here's the New York Plunderer! 
Here's the New York Keyhole Reporter! Here's 
the New York Rowdy Journal! Here's all the 
New York papers! Here's full particulars of the 
patriotic Locofoco movement yesterday, in which 
the Whigs were so chawed up; and the last Ala- 
bama gouging case; and the interesting Arizona 
dooel with bowie knives; and all the political, 
commercial, and fashionable news. Here they 
are! Here they are! Here's the papers! Here's 
the papers! Here's the Sewer! Here's the New 
York Sewer! Here's some of the twelve thousand 
of today's Sewer, with the best accounts of the 
markets, and four whole columns of country cor- 
respondence, and a full account of the ball at 
Mrs. White's last night, where all the beauty and 
fashion of New York was assembled; with the 
Sewer's own particulars of the private lives of all 
the ladies that were there. Here's the Sewer! 
Here's the Sewer's exposure of the Wall Street 
gang, and the Sewer's exposure of the Washing- 

-l-9-^ 



FIFTH AVENUE 

ton gang, and the Sewer's exclusive account of 
a flagrant act of dishonesty committed by the 
Secretary of State when he was eight years old; 
now communicated, at great expense, by his own 
nurse. Here's the Sewer! Here's the 'New York 
Sewer in its twelfth thousand, with a whole 
column of New Yorkers to be shown up, and all 
their names printed. Here's the Sewer's article 
upon the judge that tried him, day afore yester- 
day, for libel, and the Sewer's tribute to the inde- 
pendent jury that didn't convict him, and the 
Sewer's account of what might have happened if 
they had! Here's the Sewer, always on the look- 
out; the leading journal of the United States! " 

Such were the cries, according to the veracious 
account of Charles Dickens, who had paid his 
first visit to us a short time before, that greeted 
the ears of Martin Chuzzlewit upon his arrival 
in the gate city of the western world. That 
amiable caricature reflects what the English novel- 
ist thought or pretended to think, of the New 
York journalism of the day. Exaggeration, of 
course: the bad manners of a young genius of 
the British lower middle classes. But quite good- 
naturedly today we concede that beneath bad 
manners and exaggeration there was a foundation 
of truth. Into the making of Colonel Diver, the 
editor of the " Rowdy Journal," may have gone 
a little of old Noah, of the " Star," or James 

-^ 10-e- 



THE SHADOW OF THE KNICKERBOCKERS 

Watson Webb, of the " Courier and Enquirer," 
or Colonel Stone, of the " Commercial." Can't 
you see those grim figures of an old world strut- 
ting down Broadway, glaring about belligerently 
and suspiciously? Almost every editor of that 
period had a theatre feud at one day or another. 
On the luckless mummer who had incurred his 
displeasure he poured out the vials of his wrath. 
He incited audiences to riot. Against his brother 
editors he hurled such epithets as '' loathsome and 
leprous slanderer and libeller," " pestilential scoun- 
drel," " polluted wretch," " foul jaws," " common 
bandit," " prince of darkness," " turkey buzzard," 
" ghoul." Somehow, in thinking of the old days, 
I find it hard to reconcile those men and women 
who lived under the Knickerbocker sway with their 
newspapers. It is pleasanter to dwell upon the 
old customs, to picture Mr. Manhattan leaving 
the scurrilous sheet behind him when he departed 
from his store or counting house, and repairing 
with clean hands to the wife of his bosom and his 
family, somewhere in Greenwich Village, or Rich- 
mond Hill, or Bond Street, or the beginnings of 
Fifth Avenue. 

But to revert to the manners of the old town. 
First of all there was the business of getting 
married. It was with an idea of permanency 
then, and the Knickerbocker wedding was, in con- 
sequence, a ceremony. To it, the groom, his best- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

man, and the ushers went attired in blue coats, 
brass buttons, high white satin stocks, ruffled- 
bosomed shirts, figured satin waistcoats, silk stock- 
ings, and pumps. The New Yorker's tailor, if 
his pretensions to fashion were well-founded, was 
Elmendorf, or Brundage, or Wheeler, or Tryon 
and Derby; his hatter, St. John, and his boot- 
makers, Kimball and Rogers. For the wedding 
ceremony, the man's hair was tightly frizzed by 
Maniort, the leading hair-dresser of the day. He 
was the proprietor of the Knickerbocker Barber- 
Shop at Broadway and Wall Street, and the town 
gossip. Years later he was to enjoy the patronage 
of the Third Napoleon in Paris as a reward for 
favours extended to the Prince when the latter was 
an exile here. There is little record of elaborate 
pre-nuptial bachelor dinners in the style of modern 
New York. What would have been the use? 
The gardens of the city's fashionable homes 
boasted no extensive circular fountains or arti- 
ficial fishponds into which the best-man or the 
father of the bride-to-be could be flung as an 
artistic diversion. As has been said, it was some- 
thing of a slow old world, lacking in many of the 
modern comforts. 

The robe of the bride was of white satin, 
tinged with yellow, the bodice cut low in the neck 
and shoulders, and ornamented with lace. Over 
her hair, built up by Martell, was flung the 



THE SHADOW OF THE KNICKERBOCKERS 

coronet of artificial orange blossoms held by the 
blonde lace veil. Then the satin boots and the 
six-button gloves. At the wedding-supper the 
bride's cake, rich, and of formidable proportions, 
was the piece de resistance. Also there was sub- 
stantial fare; hams, turkeys, chicken, and game; 
besides fruits, candies, and creams. In place of 
the champagne of later days there were Madeira, 
Port, and Sherry. Round the table, illuminated 
by wax candles and astral lamps, young and old 
gathered; the women of a past generation in stiff 
brocades, powdered puffs, and tortoise-shell combs. 
From the first to last the Fifth Avenue wedding 
of those days reflected the patriarchal system that 
had not yet passed. 

It was not a matter of denomination, but when 
the world was young, the pioneers of the Avenue 
did not smile on the way to worship. The Sab- 
bath day still retained a good deal of the funereal 
aspect with which the New England Puritans had 
invested it. The city was silent save for the tolling 
of the church bells. At ten o'clock in the morn- 
ing, at three in the afternoon, and again, at seven 
at night, the solemn processions of men, women, 
and children, clad in their Sunday best, issued 
from the homes, and slowly wended their way to 
church. When the congregation had gathered, 
and the service was about to begin, heavy iron 
chains were drawn tightly across the streets ad- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

jacent to the various places of worship. It was 
the hour for serious meditation. No distracting 
noise was to be allowed to fall upon those devout 
ears. 

Abram C. Dayton, in his " Last Days of 
Knickerbocker Life," left a description of the 
service at the Dutch Reformed Church of that 
day. He told of the long-drawn-out extem- 
poraneous prayers, the allusions to " benighted 
heathen"; to " whited sepulchres"; to "the lake 
which burns with fire and brimstone." Of instru- 
mental accompaniment there was none, and free 
scope was both given and taken by the human voice 
divine. Then the sermon! Men were strong in 
those days! Clergymen had not become affected 
with the throat troubles prevalent in later times. 
No hour-glass or warning clock was displayed in 
the bleak spare edifice. In the exuberance of zeal 
often the end of the discourse came only with 
utter physical exhaustion. Then the passing of 
the plate; an eight-stanza hymn, closing with the 
vehemently shouted Doxology; and the conclud- 
ing Benediction. From that old-time Sabbath 
day the affairs of the world were rigidly excluded. 
It was a day of rest not only for the family but 
for the family's man-servant and maid-servant. 
Saturday had seen the preparation of the neces- 
sary food. 

On the Sabbath only cold collations were 




THE WASHINGTON ARCH. A SPLENDID SENTINEL GUARD- 
ING THE APPROACH TO THE AVENUE. BEYOND, 
HOUSES DATING FROM THE THIRTIES OF THE LAST 
CENTURY, THAT MARK THE BEGINNING OF THE 
STRETCH OF TRADITION 



THE SHADOW OF THE KNICKERBOCKERS 

served. Public opinion was a stern master. Woe 
betide the one rash enough to defy the established 
conventions! The physician on his rounds, or 
the church-goer too aged or infirm to walk to the 
place of worship, were the only ones permitted 
to make use of a horse and carriage. Now and 
then one of the godless would slip away north- 
ward for a drive on some unfrequented road. 
Detection meant society's averted face and stern 
reprimand. For an indefinite period the sinner 
would be a subject of intercession at evening 
prayers. 

The weekday life was in keeping with the 
Knickerbocker Sabbath. Home was the family 
castle, over which parental authority ruled with 
an iron hand. Hospitahty was genuine and 
whole-hearted; but tempered by frugal modera- 
tion. Strict punctuality was demanded of every 
member of the household. The noon repast was 
the meal of the day. At the stroke of twelve 
old New York sat down to table. In the home 
there was variety and abundance, but the dinner 
was served as one course. Meats, poultry, vege- 
tables, pies, puddings, fruits, and sweets were 
crowded together on the board. This adherence 
to the midday meal must have been the weak 
point in the armour in which the old order encased 
itself. For there the first breach was made. New 
Yorkers, returning from visits to Europe, hooted 

-i- 15 -J- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

at the primitive noon repast of their j'^outh. At 
first what were called the " foreign airs " of these 
would-be innovators were treated with derision. 
But they persisted, and by slow stages three 
o'clock became the extra fashionable hour for 
dinner. The old City Hotel was one of the first 
public places to fall into line. 

The time was to come when a dining establish- 
ment, second to none of its day in social prestige 
and culinary excellence, was to stand on a corner 
of Fifth Avenue and Fourteenth Street. But 
when those who dwelt on lower Fifth Avenue 
were still pioneers, dining out in public places 
meant a long and venturesome journey to the 
southward. The restaurants of that time — they 
were more generally called " eating houses," — were 
almost all established in the business portions of 
the city. The midday dinner was the meal on 
which they depended for their main support. 
Then masculine New York left its shop or its 
counting house, hurried a block to the right, or a 
block to the left, and fell greedily on the suc- 
culent oyster, the slice of rare roast beef, or the 
sizzling English mutton chop. Conspicuous 
among the refectories of this type were the Auc- 
tion Hotel, on Water Street, near Wall; the 
dining room of Clark and Brown, on Maiden 
Lane, near Liberty Street, one of the first of the 
so-called English chop-houses; the United States 



THE SHADOW OF THE KNICKERBOCKERS 

Hotel, which stood, until a few years ago, at the 
corner of Water and Fulton Streets, and which 
was the chosen home of the captains of the whaling 
ships from New London, Nantucket, New Bed- 
ford, and Sag Harbor; Downing's, on Broad 
Street, famed for its Saddle Rocks and Blue 
Points, and its political patrons; and the base- 
ment on Park Row, a few doors from the old 
Park Theatre, presided over by one Edward 
Windust. This last was a rendezvous for actors, 
artists, musicians, newspaper-men — in short, the 
Bohemian set of that day — and its walls were 
covered with old play-bills, newspaper clippings, 
and portraits of tragedians and comedians of the 
past. 

But already a demand had been felt for viands 
of another nature; hospitality of another sort. 
The womankind of the day was looking for an 
occasional chance to break away from the monot- 
onous if wholesome and substantial table of the 
home. Those stiff Knickerbockers knew it not; 
but the modern dining-out New York was al- 
ready in the making. At first the movement was 
ascribed to the European Continental element. 
In New York Delmonico and Guerin were the 
pioneers in the field. The former began in a 
little place of pine tables and rough wooden chairs 
on William Street, between Fulton and Ann. 
The original equipment consisted of a broad 

-i- 17 -J- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

counter covered with white napkins, two-tine forks, 
buck-handled knives, and earthenware plates and 
cups. From such humble beginnings grew the 
establishments that have subsequently carried the 
name. Francis Guerin's first cafe was on Broad- 
way, between Pine and Cedar Streets, directly 
opposite the old City Hotel. Another resort of 
the same type was the Cafe des Mille Colonnes, 
kept by the Italian, Palmo, on the west side of 
Broadway, near Duane Street. It was appar- 
ently on a scale lavish for those days. Long 
mirrors on the walls reflected, in an endless vista, 
the gilded columns that supported the ceiling. 
The fortune accumulated by Palmo in the res- 
taurant was lost in an attempt to introduce Italian 
opera into the United States. Pahno's Opera 
House, in Chamber Street, between Centre Street 
and Broadway, later became Burton's Theatre. 

Until 1844, New York was guarded against 
crime by the old " Leather-heads." This force 
patrolled the city by night, or that part of it 
known as the lamp district. They were not 
watchmen by profession, but were recruited from 
the ranks of porters, cartmen, stevedores, and 
labourers. They were distinguished by a fireman's 
cap without front (hence the name " Leather- 
head "), an old camlet coat, and a lantern. They 
had a wholesome respect for their skins, and 
were inclined to keep out of harm's way, seldom 



THE SHADOW OF THE KNICKERBOCKERS 

visiting the darker quarters of the city. When 
they bawled the hour all rogues in the vicinity 
were made aware of their whereabouts. Above 
Fourteenth Street the whole city was a neglected 
region. It was beyond the lamp district and in 
the dark. 

In no way, to the mind of the present scribe, 
can the contrast between the life of the modern 
city and of the town of the days when Fifth 
Avenue was in the making be better emphasized 
than by comparing the conditions of travel. It 
was in the year 1820 that John Stevens of Ho- 
boken, who had become exasperated because 
people did not see the value of railroads as he 
did, resolved to prove, at his own expense, that 
the method of travel urged by him was not a 
madman's scheme. So on his own estate on the 
Hoboken hill he built a little railway of narrow 
gauge and a small locomotive. Long enough 
had he been sneered at and called maniac. He 
put the locomotive on the track with cars behind 
it, and ran it with himself as a passenger, to the 
amazement of those before whom the demonstra- 
tion was made. So far as is known that was the 
first locomotive to be built or run on a track in 
America. But even with Stevens's successful ex- 
ample, years passed before steam travel assumed 
a practical form. 

When the pioneer of Fifth Avenue wished to 



FIFTH AVENUE 

voyage far afield it was toward the stage-coach 
as a means of transportation that his mind turned, 
for the stage-coach was the only way by which 
a large portion of the population could accom- 
plish overland journeys. To go to Boston, for 
example, the traveller from New York usually 
left by a steamboat that took him to Providence 
in about twenty-three hours, and travelled the 
remaining forty miles by coach. Five hours was 
needed for the overland journey, and was con- 
sidered amazing speed. By the year 1832 the 
overland trip between 'New York and Boston had 
been reduced to forty-one hours. But the pas- 
sengers were not allowed to break the journey at 
a tavern, even for four or five hours of sleep, as 
they had formerly done, but were carried forward 
night and day without intermission. A fare of 
eleven dollars was usually exacted for the trip. 

Even to go to one of the towns of Connecticut, 
the shore towns of the Boston Post Road, was 
an undertaking that called for serious preliminary 
study. A New York paper, now before the writer, 
carries in its first column an advertisement of 
a new steamer, the " Fairfield," plying between 
New York and Norwalk. But in order to make 
use of its services, the traveller had to be at the 
pier at the foot of Market Street at six o'clock 
in the morning. Upon the arrival at Norwalk 
stages were at hand for the convenience of such 

-?-20-i- 



THE SHADOW OF THE KNICKERBOCKERS 

of the passengers who wished to travel on to 
Saugatuck, Fairfield, Bridgeport, Stratford, Mil- 
ford, and other points. The same column carried 
information for those who contemplated voyaging 
to Newport or Providence. Every Monday, 
Wednesday, and Friday the steamboats " Ben- 
jamin Franklin" (Capt. E. S. Bunker) and 
"President" (Capt. R. S. Bunker) left New 
York for those Rhode Island towns at five o'clock 
in the evening. 

The Post Road to Boston of those days dif- 
fered much from the Boston Post Road of the 
present; especially in its first stages going north- 
ward from New York. There was no spacious 
Pelham Parkway skirting the waters of the Long 
Island Sound. Before crossing the Harlem the 
road followed in a general way the Broadway 
trail. Beyond the river it zigzagged in a north- 
easterly direction through Eastchester. Not until 
the crossing of the Byram River transferred the 
road from New York to New England did it take 
on any resemblance to the trail of today, and even 
beyond, the town of Greenwich seems to have 
been neglected entirely. 

Yet, in comparison, the East was developed. 
It was the bold Sinbad turning his face resolutely 
and courageously towards the setting sun who 
experienced the real inconveniences and perils. 
Nor, at first, did that mean the adventurous 



FIFTH AVENUE 

journey into the lands that were beyond the great 
Appalachian range. The shining countenance of 
the unknown was nearer at hand. It is just a 
matter of turning the clock back a hundred years. 
From the windows of the apartment houses 
looking down on the Riverside Drive the Dela- 
ware River is just beyond the Jersey hills. To 
journey there today does not even call for the 
study of time-tables. Mr. Manhattan rises at 
the usual hour and eats his usual leisurely break- 
fast. At, say, nine o'clock, he settles back behind 
the steering-wheel of his motor-car. Crossing the 
Hudson by the Forty-second Street Ferry, he 
climbs the Weehawken slope, and swings westward 
over one of the uninviting turnpikes that disfigure 
the marshy land between the Passaic and the 
Hackensack. Then he finds the real Jersey, the 
Jerseyman's Jersey, of rolling hills, and historic 
memories of Washington's Continental troops in 
ragged blue and buff. — Morristown, with its 
superb estates, the stiff climb of Schooley's Moun- 
tain, the descent along the wooded ravine, the 
road following the winding Musconetcong River 
through Washington, the clustered buildings of 
Lafayette College crowning the Penns^dvania 
shore, and in good time for luncheon Mr. Man- 
hattan is over the bridge connecting Easton and 
Phillipsburg. 

A few years ago there appeared a little book 
-J-22-J- 



THE SHADOW OF THE KNICKERBOCKERS 

telling of the experiences of a family migrating 
from Connecticut to Ohio in 1811. In interest- 
ing contrast to the morning dash just outlined is 
the story of that journey of a little more than 
one hundred years ago. Before crossing the 
North River the voyagers solemnly discussed the 
perilous waters that confronted them. " Tomor- 
row we embark for the opposite shore: may 
Heaven preserve us from the raging, angry 
waves!" The first night's stop was at Spring- 
field, where, within the living memory of the 
older members of the party, a skirmish between 
the American troops and the soldiers of King 
George had taken place. 

Another day's travel carried the party as far 
as Chester. At that point the task of travel be- 
came arduous. Over miry roads, in places blocked 
by boulders, there was the painful, laborious ascent 
of the steep grade leading to the summit of what 
we now call Schooley's Mountain. There the 
party camped for the night, beginning the descent 
early the morning of the following day. The 
brisk three or four hours' run that gives the motor- 
ist of today just the edge of appetite needed for 
the full enjoyment of his midday meal was to 
those hardy adventurers of a century ago almost 
the journey of a week. 

For transatlantic travel there was the Black 
Ball hne, between New York and Liverpool, first 

-J- 23 -J- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

of four ships, and later of twelve. That service 
had been founded in 1816 by New York mer- 
chants. The Red Star line followed in 1821, and 
soon after the Swallowtail line. The packets were 
ships of from six hundred to fifteen hundred tons 
burden, and made the eastward trip in about 
twenty-three days and the return trip in about 
forty days. The record was held by the " Can- 
ada," of the Black Ball line, which had made the 
outward run in fifteen days and eighteen hours. 
That time was reduced later by the " Amazon." 
The first steamer to cross the Atlantic was the 
American ship *' Savannah." She made the trial 
trip from New York to Savannah in April, 1819, 
and in the following month her owners decided 
to send her overseas. The time of her passage 
was twenty-six days, eight under steam and 
eighteen under sail. Stephen Rogers, her navi- 
gator, in a letter to the New London " Gazette," 
wrote that the " Savannah " was first sighted 
from the telegraph station at Cape Clear, on the 
southern coast of Ireland, which reported her as 
being on fire, and a king's cutter was sent to 
her relief. " But great was their wonder at their 
inability to come up with a ship under bare poles. 
After several shots had been fired from the cutter 
the engine was stopped, and the surprise of the 
cutter's crew at the mistake they had made, as 
well as their curiosity to see the strange Yankee 

-J- 24 -J- 



THE SHADOW OF THE KNICKERBOCKERS 

craft, can be easily imagined." From Liverpool 
the " Savannah " proceeded to St. Petersburg, 
stopping at Stockholm, and on her return she 
left St. Petersburg on October 10th, arriving 
at Savannah November 30th. But the prestige 
that the journey had won did not com- 
pensate for the heavy expense. Her boilers, 
engines, and paddles were removed, and she was 
placed on the Savannah route as a packet ship, 
being finally wrecked on the Long Island coast. 
The successful establishment of steam as a means 
of conveying a vessel across the Atlantic did not 
come until the spring of 1838, when, on the same 
day, April 23rd, two ships from England reached 
New York. They were the " Sirius," which had 
sailed from Cork, Ireland, April 4th, and the 
" Great Western," which had left Bristol April 
8th. The following year marked the founding of 
the Cunard Line. 

About the same time began the famous Clippers, 
which carried triumphantly the American flag to 
every corner of the Seven Seas. They were at 
first small, swift vessels of from six hundred to 
nine hundred tons, and designed for the China 
tea trade. Later came the " Challenge," of two 
thousand tons, and the " Invincible," of two thou- 
sand one hundred and fifty tons. " That clipper 
epoch," said a writer in " Harper's Magazine " 
for January, 1884<, " was an epoch to be proud of; 

-«- 25 -h. 



FIFTH AVENUE 

and we were proud of it. The New York news- 
papers abounded in such headhnes as these: 
* Quickest Trip on Record,' ' Shortest Passage to 
San Francisco,' ' Unparalleled Speed,' ' Quickest 
Voyage Yet,' ' A Clipper as is a Clipper,' ' Ex- 
traordinary Dispatch,' ' The Quickest Voyage to 
China,' ' The Contest of the Clippers,' ' Great Pas- 
sage from San Francisco,' ' Race Round the 
World.' " Runs of three hundred and even three 
hundred and thirty miles a day were not uncom- 
mon feats of those clipper ships, a rate of speed 
far surpassing the achievement of the steam-pro- 
pelled vessels of the period. 

When Charles Dickens first came to New York, 
in 1842, it was after a transatlantic journey that 
had landed him at Boston. There is extant a 
picture of the cabin that he occupied on the 
" Britannia " on the trip across that throws an 
interesting light on the limitations and incon- 
veniences to which early Fifth Avenue was sub- 
jected when it visited the old world. Leaving 
Boston on a February afternoon, Dickens pro- 
ceeded by rail to Worcester. The next morning 
another train carried him to Springfield. The 
next stop was Hartford, a distance of only twenty- 
five miles. But at that time of the year, Dickens 
records, the roads were so bad that the journey 
would probably have occupied ten or twelve hours. 
So progress was accomplished by means of the 

-f-26-^ 



THE SHADOW OF THE KNICKERBOCKERS 

waters of the Connecticut River, in a boat that 
the Enghshman described as so many feet short, 
and so many feet narrow, with a cabin apparently 
for a certain celebrated dwarf of the period, yet 
somehow containing the ubiquitous American rock- 
ing chair. Going from Hartford to New Haven 
consumed three hours of train travel; and, rising 
early after a night's rest, Dickens went on board 
the Sound packet bound for New York. That 
was the first American steamboat of any size that 
he had seen, and he wrote that, to an Englishman, 
it was less like a steamboat than a huge floating 
bath, and that its cabin, to his unaccustomed eyes, 
seemed about as long as the Burlington Arcade. 
From the deck of this packet he first viewed 
Hell's Gate, the Hog's Back, the Frying Pan, 
and other notorious localities attractive to readers 
of the Diedrich Knickerbocker History. When, 
later, Dickens left New York for Philadelphia, 
he wrote of the journey as being made by rail- 
road and two ferries, and occupying between five 
and six hours. 

The ten years that separated the first visit of 
Dickens and the first visit of Thackeray had 
wrought many changes. Thackeray, too, came 
to New York from Boston, but in his case it 
was the matter of one unbroken train journey, 
in the course of which he reread the " Shabby 
Genteel Story " of a dozen years before. 



FIFTH AVENUE 

Dickens's transatlantic trip had consumed nine- 
teen days. The " Canada," which carried Thack- 
eray, made the crossing in thirteen. In New 
York Thackeray stayed at the Clarendon Hotel, 
on the corner of Fourth Avenue and Eighteenth 
Street; but his favourite haunt in the city was the 
third home of the Century, in Clinton Place. 
Though not in the least given to flattery or over- 
effusiveness in his comments on Americans and 
American institutions, Thackeray wrote and spoke 
of the Century as " the best and most comfortable 
club in the world." 



28 



CHAPTER II 

The Stretch of Tradition 

Stretches of the Avenue — The Stretch of Tradition — Wash- 
ington Arch — Old Homes and Gardens — The Mews and 
MacDougal Alley — In the Fourth Decade — A Genial Ruf- 
fian of the Olden Time — Sailor's Snug Harbor — The Miss 
Green School — Andrew H. Green, John Fiske, John Bigelow, 
Elihu Root, and Others as Teachers — The Brevoort Farm — 
The First Hotel of the Avenue — A Romance of 1840 — 
" Both Sides of the Avenue," 

A snug little farm was the old Brevoort 
Where cabbages grew of the choicest sort; 
Full-headed, and generous, ample and fat. 
In a queenly way on their stems they sat. 
And there was boast of their genuine breed. 
For from old Utrecht had come their seed. 

— Gideon Tucker, " The Old Brevoort Farm." 

Passing under the Washington Arch, the march 
up the Avenue properly begins. To commem- 
orate the centenary of the inauguration of the 
nation's first President a temporary arch was 
erected in the spring of 1889. The original 
structure reached from corner to corner across 
Fifth Avenue, opposite the Park, and the ex- 
pense was borne by Mr. William Rhinelander 
Stewart and other residents of Washington 
Square. It added so much to the beauty of the 
entrance to the Avenue that steps were taken to 

-1-29-J- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

make it permanent, and the present Arch was 
the result of popular subscription. One hundred 
and twenty-eight thousand dollars was the cost 
of the structure, which was designed by Stanford 
White. Comparatively recent additions to the 
Arch are the two sculptured groups on northern 
facade, to the right and left of the span. They 
are the work of H. A. MacNeil. 

Of all the blocks in the stretch of tradition that 
carries the Avenue up to Fourteenth Street, the 
richest in interest is, naturally, that which lies im- 
mediately north of the Square. Dividing this 
block in two, and running respectively east and 
west, are Washington Mews and MacDougall 
Alley. When Fifth Avenue was young and ad- 
dicted to stately horse-drawn turnouts, it was in 
these half streets that were stabled the steeds and 
the carriages. Of comparatively recent date is 
the remodelling that has converted the old stables 
into quaint, if somewhat garish artist studios. 

From the top of a north-bound bus as it leaves 
the Square may be seen the beautiful gardens that 
have always been a feature of these first houses. 
Mrs. Emily Johnston de Forest, in her life of 
her grandfather, John Johnston, has described 
these gardens as they were from 1833 to 1842. 
" The houses in the ' Row,' as this part of Wash- 
ington Square was called, all had beautiful gar- 
dens in the rear about ninety feet deep, sur- 

-J-30-H 



THE STRETCH OF TRADITION 

rounded by white, grape-covered trellises, with 
rounded arches at intervals, and lovely borders 
full of old-fashioned flowers." Although some of 
the " Row " had cisterns, all the residents went 
for their washing water to " the pump with a long 
handle " that stood in the Square. Of that pump 
Mrs. de Forest tells the following tale. One of 
her grandfather's neighbours told his coachman to 
fetch a couple of pails of water for Mary, the 
laundress. The coachman said that this was not 
his business, and upon being asked what his busi- 
ness was, replied: "To harness the horses and 
drive them." Thereupon he was told to bring 
the carriage to the door. His employer then 
invited the laundress with her two pails to step 
in and bade the coachman to drive her to the 
pump. There was no further trouble with the 
coachman. 

As has been told elsewhere, before the Avenue 
was ever dreamed of, this land belonged to the 
Randall estate. The founder of the family was 
one Captain Thomas Randall, described as a free- 
booter of the seas, who commanded the " Fox," 
and sailed for years in and out of New Orleans, 
where he sold the proceeds of his voyages and 
captures. To this genial old ruffian was born a 
son, Robert Richard, after which event the father 
settled down and became a respectable merchant 
in Hanover Street, New York. He was coxswain 



FIFTH AVENUE 

of the barge crew of thirteen ship's captains who 
rowed General Washington from Ehzabethtown 
Point to New York, on the way to the first 
inauguration. When Robert Richard came to die, 
in 1801, he dictated, propped up in bed, his last 
will. After the bequests to relatives and servants, 
he whispered to his lawyer : " My father was a 
mariner, his fortune was made at sea. There is 
no snug harbour for worn-out sailors. I would 
like to do something for them." Incidentally, the 
lawyer who drew up the will was Alexander 
Hamilton. 

So the Sailor's Snug Harbor Estate came into 
being, later to be transferred to its present home 
on Staten Island. As I survey it from the Rich- 
mond Terrace, which it faces, I like to recall its 
origin. That origin does not in the least seem to 
interfere with the comfort of the old salts in blue 
puffing away at their short pipes before the gate 
or strolling across the broad lawn. Never mind 
the source of Captain Tom's money. It is not 
for them to worry about the " Fox," or the " De 
Lancey," a brigantine with fourteen guns, which 
the " financier " took out in 1757, and with which 
he made some sensational captures, or the " Saucy 
Sally." Eventually the " De Lancey " was taken 
by the Dutch and the " Saucy Sally " by the 
English. But before these misfortunes befell him 
Captain Tom had amassed a fat property. Os- 

-i-32-f- 




^ / / if ^^ ' * 



"£35*5 y I r «. ' '/ A ■ 







AT THE NORTHEAST CORNER OF THE AVENUE AND TENTH 
STREET IS THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF THE ASCENSION, 
BUILT IN 1840, AND CONSECRATED NOVEMBER 5, 184I. 
IT BELONGS TO A PART OF THE AVENUE, FROM THE 
SQUARE TO TWELFTH STREET, WHICH HAS CHANGED 
LITTLE SINCE 1 845 



THE STRETCH OF TRADITION 

tensibly he plied a coastwise trade mostly between 
New York and New Orleans. But the same 
chronicler to whom we owe the significant ex- 
pression: " In those days a man was looked upon 
as highly unfortunate if he had not a vessel which 
he could put to profitable use," summed the matter 
up when he said: "The Captain went wherever 
the Spanish flag covered the largest amount of 
gold." 

At the northeast corner of Washington Square 
and Fifth Avenue is the James Boorman house, 
now, I believe, the residence of Mr. Eugene 
Delano. Helen W. Henderson, in " A Loiterer 
in New York," alludes to certain letters about old 
New York written by Mr. Boorman's niece. 
" She writes," says Miss Henderson, " of her sister 
having been sent to boarding school at Miss 
Green's, No. 1 Fifth Avenue, and of how she 
used to comfort herself, in her home-sickness for 
the family, at Scarborough-on-the-Hudson, by 
looking out of the side windows of her prison at 
her uncle, * walking in his flower-garden in the 
rear of his house on Washington Square!'" 
When James Boorman built his house, it was all 
open country behind it. Mr. Boorman built also 
the houses Nos. 1 and 3 Fifth Avenue and the 
stables that were the nucleus of the Washington 
Mews of the present day. In the houses was 
opened, in 1835, a select school for young ladies, 

-J- 33 -J- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

presided over at first by Mr. Boorman's only 
sister, Mrs. Esther Smith. 

Soon, from Worcester, Massachusetts, came a 
Miss Green, a girl of eighteen, to teach in the 
school. Another sister followed and in the course 
of a few years the establishment became the Misses 
Green School, which, for a long period, before 
and after the Civil War, was one of the most 
distinguished institutions of its kind in the city. 
Later it was carried on by the Misses Graham. 
There were educated the daughters of the com- 
mercial and social leaders of New York. Among 
the pupils were Fanny and Jenny Jerome, the 
latter afterwards to become Lady Randolph 
Churchill, and the mother of Winston Churchill. 
A brother of Lucy and Mary Green was Andrew 
H. Green, the " Father of Greater New York." 
He had for a time a share in the direction of 
the establishment, and in 1844, taught a class in 
American history. Some of the younger teachers 
came from the Union Theological Seminary in 
Washington Square. Among the men later to 
become distinguished, who lectured at the school, 
were Felix Foresti, professor at the University, 
and at Columbia College, Clarence Cook, Lyman 
Abbott, John Fiske, John Bigelow, teaching 
botany and charming the young ladies because he 
was " so handsome," and Elihu Root, then a 
youth fresh from college. To quote from Miss 

-i-34-J- 



THE STRETCH OF TRADITION 

Henderson: "Miss Boorman has often told me 
of the amusement that the shy theological students 
and other young teachers afforded the girls in 
their classes, and how delighted these used to be 
to see instructors fall into a trap which was un- 
consciously prepared for them. The room in 
which the lectures were given had two doors, side 
by side, and exactly alike, one leading into the hall 
and the other into a closet. The young men 
having concluded their remarks, and feeling some 
relief at the successful termination of the ordeal, 
would tuck their books under their arms, bow 
gravely to the class, open the door, and walk 
briskly into the closet. Even Miss Green's dis- 
cipline had its limits, and when the lecturer turned 
to find the proper exit he had to face a class of 
grinning schoolgirls not much younger than him- 
self, to his endless mortification. Elihu Root 
recently met at a dinner a lady who asked him 
if he remembered her as a member of his class 
at Miss Green's school. * Do I remember you?' 
the former secretary of State replied. ' You are 
one of the girls who used to laugh at me when 
I had to walk into the closet.' " 

It was in 1835, when the new avenue was in 
the first flush of its lusty infancy, that a hotel 
was opened at the northeast corner of Eighth 
Street. They call it the Lafayette today: to- 
morrow it may have still another name. But to 

•4-35-?- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

one with any feeling for old New York it will 
always be remembered by its appellation of yes- 
terday, which it drew from the old proprietors of 
the land on which it stands, that family that is 
descended from Hendrick Brevoort who had 
served Haarlem as constable and overseer, and 
later emigrated to New York, where he was an 
alderman from 1702 to 1713. The Brevoort farm 
adjoined the Randall farm and ran northeasterly 
to about Fourth Avenue and Fourteenth Street. 
Among the descendants of the Dutch burgher 
was one Henry Brevoort, to whose obstinacy of 
disposition is owed a curious inconsistency of the 
city of today. His farmhouse was on the west 
side of Fourth Avenue and on his land were 
certain favourite trees. When the Commissioners 
were replanning the town in 1807 there was a 
projected Eleventh Street. But the trees were 
in the way of the improvement, so old Brevoort 
stood in the doorway, blunderbuss in hand, and 
defied the invaders to such purpose that to this 
day Eleventh Street has never been cut through. 
Instead, Grace Church, its garden and rectory 
cover the site of the old homestead. Later the 
vestry of Grace Church was to play old Brevoort's 
game. " Boss " Tweed determined to cut through 
or make the church pay handsomely for immmiity. 
The vestry defied him. Tweed never acted. 
There was another Henry Brevoort in the 
-J- 36-*- 



THE STRETCH OF TRADITION 

family. He it was who built the house that now 
stands at the northwest corner of the Avenue and 
Ninth Street. That Henry was the grandfather 
of James Renwick, Jr., the architect who built 
Grace Church and St. Patrick's Cathedral. His 
house was one of the great houses of the early 
days. Now known as the De Rham house — 
Brevoort sold it in 1857 to Henry De Rham for 
fifty-seven thousand dollars, — it still strikes the 
passer-by on account of its individuality of ap- 
pearance. But long before the De Rhams en- 
tered in possession it had its romance. There, 
the evening of February 24, 1840, was held the 
first masked ball ever given in New York. It 
was, to quote Mr. George S. Hellman, " the 
most splendid social affair of the first half of the 
nineteenth century." But it was also the last 
masked ball held in the town for many years. 

The name of the British Consul to New York 
at the time was Anthony Barclay, and he had a 
daughter. Her name was Matilda; she is de- 
scribed as having been a belle of great charm and 
beauty, and as having had a number of suitors. 
Of course, after the fashion of all love stories, 
the suitor favoured by her was the one of whom 
her parents most disapproved. He was a young 
South Carolinian named Burgwyne. Opposition 
served only to fan the flame, and the lovers met 
by stealth, and the gay Southerner wooed the fair 

-J- 37 -J- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

Briton in the good old school poetical manner. 
In soft communion of fancy they wandered to- 
gether to far lands; to: 

" that delightful Province of the Sun, 
The first of Persian lands he shines upon, 
Where all the loveliest children of his beam, 
Flow'rets and fruits, blush over every stream. 
And, fairest of all streams, the Murga roves 
Among Merou's bright palaces and groves." 

It was " Tom " Moore's " Lalla Rookh " that was 
dearest to their hearts. Then came the great 
masked ball, to which practically all " society " 
was invited. 

Matilda and Burgwyne agreed to go in the 
guise of their romantic favom'ites; she as Lalla 
Rookh, and he as Feramorz, the young Prince. 
She wore " floating gauzes, bracelets, a small 
coronet of jewels, and a rose-coloured bridal veil." 
His dress was " simple, yet not without marks 
of costliness, with a high Tartarian cap, and 
strings of pearls hanging from his flowered girdle 
of Kaskan." Till four o'clock in the morning 
they danced. Then, still wearing the costumes of 
the romantic poem, they slipped away from the 
ball and were married before breakfast. It seems 
quite harmless, and natural, and as it should have 
been, when we regard it after all the years. But 
it caused a great uproar and scandal at the time, 
and brought masked balls into such odium that 



THE STRETCH OF TRADITION 

there was, a bit later, a fine of one thousand 
dollars imposed on anyone who should give one, — 
one-half to be deducted in case you told on 
yourself. 

There is a little magazine published in New 
York designed to entertain and instruct those 
who view from the top of a bus of one of the various 
lines that are the outgrowth of the old Fifth 
Avenue stage line. The magazine is called " From 
a Fifth Avenue Bus," and a feature from month 
to month is the department known as " Both Sides 
of Fifth Avenue." In the stretch between the 
Square and Eleventh Street, it points out as 
residences of particular interest those of Paul 
Dana, No. 1, George T. Bestle, 'No. 3, F. Spencer 
Witherbee, No. 4, and Lispenard Stewart, No. 6; 
all below Eighth Street. Then, between Eighth 
and Ninth, Pierre Mali, No. 8, John C. Eames, 
No. 12, Miss Abigail Burt, No. 14, Dr. J. Milton 
Mabbott, No. 17, Dr. Edward L. Partridge, 
No. 19, and Dr. Robert J. Kahn (former Mark 
Twain home), No. 21. Between Ninth and 
Tenth, Charles De Rham, No. 24, Mrs. George 
Ethridge, No. 27, Mrs. Peter F. ColHer, No. 29, 
and Edwin W. Coggeshall, No. 30. On the next 
block, Frank B. Wiborg, No. 40, Gen. Rush 
Hawkins, No. 42, Miss Elsie Borg, No. 43, 
Howard Carter Dickinson, No. 45, Mrs. J. P. 
Cassidy, No. 49, and William W. Thompkins, 

-i-39-J- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

No. 68. Besides the private residences are men- 
tioned the Hotel Brevoort (the traditional name 
is used), the Berkeley at No. 20, and the Church 
of the Ascension, at Tenth Street, one of the 
very first of the Fifth Avenue churches, and 
the scene, on June 26, 1844, of the marriage of 
President John Tyler and Miss Julia Gardiner, 
the first marriage of a President of the United 
States during his term of office. The church a 
block farther north, on the same side of the 
Avenue is the First Presbyterian, dating from 
1845, when the congregation moved uptown from 
the earlier edifice on Wall Street, just east of 
New Street. 



40 



CHAPTER III 

A Knickerbocker Pepys 

A Knickerbocker Pepys — The Span of a Life — A Man of 
Many Responsibilities — Storm and Stress — Political Pro- 
testations — Hone and the Journalists — Contemporary Im- 
pressions of Bryant and Bennett — Hone and the Men of 
Letters — The Ways of British Lions. 

There is one kind of immortality that is not so 
much a matter of amount and quality of achieve- 
ment as of the particular period of achievement. 
That, for example, of Samuel Pepys. 

Pepys, living in the turbulent, densely popu- 
lated London of our time, and recording day by 
day the events coming under his observation, 
would probably have his audience of posterity lim- 
ited to a little circle of venerating descendants 
who would certainly bore the neighbours. It is 
quite easy to picture the members of that circle 
in the year 1998, or 2024. "Listen to what 
Grandpapa's Diary says of the awful Zeppelin 
raids of February, 1917," or, "But Great- 
grandpapa, who had just finished his walk in the 
Park, and was passing Downing Street when the 
news came, etc." " II est fatiguant," whispered 
Mr. St. John of General Webb at one of the 

w- 41, -fr- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

dinners in " Henry Esmond," " avee sa trompette 
de Wynandael." That persistent blowing of the 
" trompette " of grandpapa would likewise be 
voted " fatiguant." "Grandpapa! A plague 
upon their grandpapa! " 

It needed the smaller town, the more limited 
age, the greater intimacy of life, to make Pepys's 
Diary the vivid human narrative that it has been 
for so many years. 

And as with the Pepys of seventeenth century 
London, so with the chronicler of events day by 
day in the New York of the first half of the 
nineteenth century. If there was a Knickerbocker 
Pepys it was Philip Hone, who in the span of 
his life saw his city expand from twenty-five 
thousand to half a million, and whose diary has 
been described as one of the most fascinating per- 
sonal documents ever penned. 

There is a little thoroughfare far downtown 
called Dutch Street. It runs from Fulton to 
John Street. There Philip Hone was born on the 
25th of October, 1780, and there he passed his 
boyhood in a wooden house at the corner of John 
and Dutch Streets which his father bought in 
1784. After a common school education, he be- 
came, at seventeen years of age, a clerk for an 
older brother whose business as an auctioneer con- 
sisted mainly in selling the cargoes brought to 
New York by American merchantmen. Two 

-^-42-i- 



A KNICKERBOCKER PEPYS 

years as a clerk, and then Philip was made a 
partner. The firm prospered, and by 1820, the 
future diarist, though only forty years old, had 
become a rich man. With the best years of his 
mature life before him, with a wish to see the 
world and a desire for self-improvement, he re- 
tired from business, and in 1821, made his first 
journey to Europe, saiHng from ISTew York on 
the " James Monroe." When he returned, he 
bought a house on Broadway, near Park Place, 
on the exact spot now occupied by the Woolworth 
Building, for which he paid twenty-five thousand 
dollars. There is extant an old print of the house, 
showing also the American Hotel on the corner, 
and another residence, the ground floor of which 
was occupied by Peabody's Book Shop. On the 
block below, where the Astor House was built 
later, were the homes of John G. Coster, David 
Lydig, and J. J. Astor. It was one of the most 
magnificent dwellings of the town, and there Hone 
entertained not only the distinguished men of 
New York, but also such Americans of country- 
wide fame as Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, and 
Harrison Gray Otis; and such old-world visitors 
as Charles Dickens, Lord Morpeth, Captain Mar- 
ry at, John Gait, and Fanny Kemble. He had 
children growing up — his marriage to Catherine 
Dunscomb had taken place in 1801, when he was 
in his twenty-second year — and for the benefit of 

-i-43-f- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

the young people his was practically open house. 
Public and private honours were thrust upon him. 
An assistant alderman from 1824 to 1826, in the 
latter year he was appointed Mayor. (The Mayor 
was not elected until 1834.) William Paulding 
had preceded him in the office, and William Pauld- 
ing succeeded him in 1827. But the Hone admin- 
istration was long remembered on account of its 
civic excellence and its social dignity. For more 
than thirty years he served gratuitously the city's 
first Bank of Savings, which was estabhshed in 
1816, and in 1841 he became its president. Gov- 
ernor of the New York Hospital, trustee of the 
Bloomingdale Asylum, founder of the Clinton 
Hall Association, and of the Mercantile Library, 
trustee of Columbia College, of the New York 
Life Insurance and Trust Company, president of 
the American Exchange Bank, and of the Glen- 
ham Manufacturing Company, vice-president of 
the Institution for the Instruction of the Deaf and 
Dumb, of the American Seamen's Fund Society, 
of the New York Historical Society, of the Fuel 
Saving Society, a director in the Matteawan 
Cotton and Machine Company, the Delaware and 
Hudson Canal Company, the Eagle Fire Insur- 
ance Company, the National Insurance Company, 
a member of the Chamber of Commerce, a man- 
ager of the Literary and Philosophical Society, 
of the Mechanic and Scientific Association, a 

-*- 44 -»- 



A KNICKERBOCKER PEPYS 

founder and a governor of the Union Club, and 
a vestryman of Trinity Church — the wonder is 
that he found time to write in his Diary at all. 
According to Bayard Tuckerman, who edited the 
Diary and wrote the Introduction to it, an ordi- 
nary day's work for Hone was " to ride out on 
horseback to the Bloomingdale Asylum, to return 
and pass the afternoon at the Bank for Savings, 
thence to attend a meeting of the Trinity Vestry, 
or to preside over the Mercantile Library Asso- 
ciation." " He was never," said Mr. Tuckerman, 
" voluntarily absent from a meeting where the 
interest of others demanded his presence, and 
many were the good dinners he lost in conse- 
quence." Again : " He had personal gifts which 
extended the influence due to his character. Tall 
and spare, his bearing was distinguished, his face 
handsome and refined; his manners were courtly, 
of what is known as the ' old school ' ; his tact was 
great — ^he had a faculty for saying the right thing. 
In his own house his hospitality was enhanced by 
a graceful urbanity and a ready wit." 

The story of Philip Hone's life is substantially 
the story of the town from 1780 till 1851. When 
he first saw the light in Dutch Street, there were 
but twenty thousand persons for the occupying 
British troopers to keep in order. \\Tien, after 
his return from Europe in the early '20s he 
bought on Broadway in the neighbourhood of City 

-e- 45 -e- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

Hall Park, that was the centre of fashionable 
residence. 

But by 1837 trade was claiming the section, 
and Hone sold out and built himself a new home, 
this time at the corner of Broadway and Great 
Jones Street. He saw the residence portion of 
the city go beyond that point, saw it grope up 
Fifth Avenue as far as Twentieth Street. The 
first entry in the Diary bears the date of 
May 18, 1828; the last of April 30, 1851, just 
four days before his death. That last entry 
shows that he felt that the end was near at hand. 
" Has the time come? " he asks, and then quotes 
seven stanzas from James Montgomery's 
"What is Prayer?", adding four stanzas of 
his own. 

Just eleven months to a day before the last 
entry, under date of May 30, 1850, Hone com- 
mented on the swiftly changing aspect of the city. 
To him the renovation of Broadway seemed to be 
an annual occurrence. If the houses were not 
pulled down they fell of their own accord. He 
wrote: "The large, three-story house, corner of 
Broadway and Fourth Street, occupied for sev- 
eral years by Mrs. Seton as a boarding-house, fell 
today at two o'clock, with a crash so astounding 
that the girls, with whom I was sitting in the 
library, imagined for a moment that it was caused 
by an earthquake. Fortunately the workmen had 

-*- 4)6 -^ 



A KNICKERBOCKER PEPYS 

notice to make their escape. No lives were lost 
and no personal injury was sustained. 

" The mania for converting Broadway into a 
street of shops is greater than ever. There is 
scarcely a block in the whole extent of this fine 
street of which some part is not in a state of 
transmutation. The City Hotel has given place 
to a row of splendid stores. 

" Stewart is extending his stores to take in the 
whole front from Chambers to Reade Street; this 
is already the most magnificent dry-goods estab- 
lishment in the world. I certainly do not remem- 
ber anything to equal it in London or Paris; with 
the addition now in progress this edifice will be 
one of the ' wonders ' of the Western world. 
Three or four good brick houses on the corner of 
Broadway and Spring Street have been levelled, I 
know not for what purpose — shops, no doubt. 
The houses — fine, costly edifices, opposite to me 
extending from Driggs's corner down to a point 
opposite to Bond Street — are to make way for 
a grand concert and exhibition establishment." 

It is far from being all mellowness and ami- 
ability, that Diary. Hone had his prejudices and 
dislikes and strong political opinions. In the 
portraits that have been preserved there is the 
suggestion of intolerance and smug self-satisfac- 
tion. Also life did not turn out quite so rosy as 
it promised in 1828, when he retired from busi- 

-?- 47 -J- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

ness with a handsome competence. In 1836, 
during the commercial depression, he met with 
financial reverses which forced him to return to 
the game of money-getting. He became presi- 
dent of the American Mutual Insurance Company, 
which was ruined by the great fire of July 19, 
1845. 

" A fire has occurred," he recorded in the entry 
of that date, " the loss of which is probably 
$5,000,000.; several of the insurance companies 
are ruined, and all are crippled. My ofiice, I fear, 
is in the former category. We have lost between 
three and four hundred thousand dollars, which 
is more than we can pay. 

" This is a hard stroke for me. I was pleas- 
antly situated with a moderate support for my 
declining years, and now, ' Othello's occupation's 
gone.' " 

But he met his reverses in a courageous manner, 
and in 1849 President Taylor appointed him 
Naval Ofiicer of the Port of New York, a place 
which he held until his death. 

As became his day. Hone was a good trencher- 
man. In the index to the Diary there are one 
hundred and sixteen pages marked as containing 
reference of some kind to dinner parties. The 
old New York names appear again and again. 
H. Brevoort, Chancellor and Mrs. Kent, Mr. and 
Mrs. W. B. Astor, Bishop Hobart, C. Brugiere 

-i-48-e- 



A KNICKERBOCKER PEPYS 

and Miss Brugiere, Robert Maitland, Dr. Wain- 
wright, Mr. and Mrs. Anthon, Judge Spencer, 
Judge Irving, Dr. Hosack, Peter Jay, P. 
Schemerhorn. And only the formal dinner par- 
ties are indexed. Aside from them there are 
scores of allusions to where the diarist dined and 
who dined with him. Small wonder that the 
passing of a cook of unusual abilities was an event 
to be recorded. An early entry, that of Feb- 
ruary 17, 1829, reads: " Died this morning, Simon, 
the celebrated cook. He was a respectable man, 
who has for many years been the fashionable 
cook in New York, and his loss will be felt on 
all occasions of large dinner and evening parties, 
unless it should be found that some suitable shoul- 
ders should be ready to receive the mantle of this 
distinguished cuisinier." When Hone was not 
entertaining at his own home or being entertained 
at somebody else's, he was trying out the fare at 
some one of the public hostelries. Date of De- 
cember 18, 1830, there is reference to a famihar 
name. " Moore, Giraud, and I went yesterday 
to dine at Delmonico's, a French restaurateur, 
in William Street, which I had heard was on the 
Parisian plan, and very good. We satisfied our 
curiosity, but not our appetites." 

We are prone to regard the Civil War as an 
affair of the sixties. Hone was one of those who 
perceived the threat of it thirty years before. 

-}- 49-f- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

Always a bitter political opponent of Jackson, 
there was one occasion when he was loud in his 
applause. The South Carolina Convention had 
passed a number of resolutions regarded by Hone 
as rank treason, and the beginning of rebellion. 
The President had dealt with the matter in a 
proclamation, of which the diarist wrote Decem- 
ber 12, 1832: "Very much to the surprise of 
some, and to the satisfaction of all our citizens, 
we have a long proclamation of President Jackson, 
which was published in Washington on the 12th. 
inst., and is in all our papers this day. It is a 
document addressed to the nullifiers of South 
Carolina, occasioned by the late treasonable pro- 
ceedings of their convention. The whole subject 
is discussed in a spirit of concihation, but with 
firmness and decision, and a determination to put 
down the wicked attempt to resist the laws. On 
the constitutionality of the laws which the nulh- 
fiers object to, and their right to recede from the 
Union, this able State paper is full and con- 
clusive. The language of the President is that of 
a father addressing his wayward children, but 
determined to punish with the utmost severity the 
first open act of insubordination. As a composi- 
tion it is splendid, and will take its place in the 
archives of our country, and will dwell in the 
memories of our citizens alongside of the farewell 
address of the * Father of his Country.' It is not 

-<-50-e- 



A KNICKERBOCKER PEPYS 

known which of the members of the cabinet is 
entitled to the honour of being the author; it is 
attributed to Mr. Livingston, the Secretary of 
State, and to Governor Cass, the Secretary of 
War. Nobody, of course, supposes it was written 
by him whose name is subscribed to it. But who- 
ever shall prove to be the author has raised to 
himself an imperishable monument of glory. The 
sentiments, at least, are approved by the Presi- 
dent, and he should have the credit of it, as he 
would have the blame if it were bad ; and, possess- 
ing these sentiments, we have reason to believe 
that he has firmness enough to do his duty. 

" I say. Hurrah for Jackson, and so I am 
willing to say at all times when he does his duty. 
The only difference between the thorough -goin^ 
Jackson man and me is, that I will not ' hurrah ' 
for him right or wrong. And I think that Jack- 
son's election may save the Union." 

If he disliked Jackson on account of his pohcies, 
he seemed to dislike journalists regardless of their 
political creeds. To his eyes they were a pesti- 
lential crew. Here is the first glimpse of Bryant, 
the great William Cullen Bryant, who as a mere 
boy had penned the beautiful " Thanatopsis." It 
is of the date of April 20, 1831. "While I was 
shaving this morning at eight o'clock, I witnessed 
from the front window an encounter in the street 
nearly opposite, between William C. Bryant and 

-h- 51 -+• 



FIFTH AVENUE 

William L. Stone, the former one of the editors 
of the Evening Post, and the latter the editor of 
the Commercial Advertiser. The former com- 
menced the attack by striking Stone over the head 
with a cow-skin; after a few blows the men closed, 
and the whip was wrested away from Bryant 
and carried off by Stone." Here and there are 
Rung expressions of admiration for Bryant's 
verse, but the tone is of one speaking of the clever- 
ness of a trained lizard. Thirteen years inter- 
vened between the first and the last Bryant entry. 
In February, 1844, Nicholas Biddle, the great 
financier, died. Something that Bryant wrote 
roused Hone's wrath. Here is his comment of 
February 28 : " Bryant, the editor of the Evening 
Post, in an article of his day, virulent and malig- 
nant as are usually the streams which flow from 
that polluted source, says that Mr. Biddle ' died 
at his country-seat, where he passed the last of 
his days in elegant retirement, which, if justice 
had taken place, would have been spent in the 
penitentiary.' This is the first instance I have 
known of the vampire of party-spirit seizing the 
lifeless body of its victim before its interment, 
and exhibiting its bloody claws to the view of 
mourning relatives and sympathizing friends. 
How such a black-hearted misanthrope as Bryant 
should possess an imagination teeming with beau- 
tiful poetical images astonishes me; one would 

-*-52-?- 



A KNICKERBOCKER PEPYS 

as soon expect to extract drops of honey from 
the fangs of the rattlesnake." 

But this was kindly tolerance compared to his 
attitude towards the elder Bennett. The latter 
apparently came under Hone's notice in January, 
1836, and the first mention in the Diary reads: 
" There is an ill-looking, squinting man called 
Bennett, formerly connected with Webb in the 
publication of his paper, who is now editor of 
the Herald, one of the penny papers which are 
hawked about the streets by a gang of trouble- 
some, ragged boys, and in which scandal is re- 
tailed to all who delight in it, at that moderate 
price. This man and Webb are now bitter ene- 
mies, and it was nuts for Bennett to be the organ 
of Mr. Lynch's late vituperative attack upon 
Webb, which Bennett introduced in his paper 
with evident marks of savage exultation." To 
that famous masked ball given by the Brevoorts 
on the evening of February 24, 1840, in their 
house at Ninth Street and Fifth Avenue Hone 
went attired as Cardinal Wolsey. He forgot to 
tell of the romance of the night, the elopement 
of Miss Barclay and young Burgwyne, devoting 
his space to the expression of his resentment over 
the presence at the affair of an emissary of Ben- 
nett. "Whether the notice they" (the guests) 
"took of him" (the "Herald" reporter), "and 
that which they extend to Bennett when he shows 

-i-53-f- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

his ugly face in Wall Street, may be considered 
approbatory of the dirty slanders and unblushing 
impudence of the paper they conduct, or is in- 
tended to purchase their forbearance towards 
themselves, the effect is equally mischievous." 
Again, date of June 2, 1840: " The punishment 
of the law adds to the fellow's notoriety, and 
personal chastisement is pollution to him who 
undertakes it. Write him down, make respectable 
people withdraw their support from the vile 
sheet, so that it will be considered disgraceful to 
read it, and the serpent will be rendered harm- 
less." In the entry of February 14, 1842, Ben- 
nett is : " The impudent disturber of the public 
peace, whose infamous paper, the Herald, is 
more scurrilous, and of course more generally 
read, than any other." September 2, 1843, Hone 
records that: "Bennett, the editor of the Herald, 
is on a tour through Great Britain, whence he 
furnishes lies and scandal for the infamous paper 
which has contributed so much to corrupt the 
morals and degrade the taste of the people of 
New York." In one of the last entries of the 
Diary, a few months before Hone's death, al- 
lusion is made to a personal attack on the editor 
by the defeated candidate of the Locofoco party 
for the District- Attorney ship. " I should be well 
pleased to hear of this fellow being punished in 
this way, and once a week for the remainder of 

-»- 54 -»- 



A KNICKERBOCKER PEPYS 

his life, so that new wounds might be inflicted 
before the old ones were healed, or until the 
fellow left off lying; but I fear that the editorial 
miscreant in this case will be more benefited than 
injured by this attack." 

A man of literary tastes, or at least a man 
who wished to be regarded as one of bookish 
inclinations. Hone seems never to have had any 
great hking for men of letters as such. All of 
the gifted and unhappy Poe's life in New York 
came within the period of the Diary, but in it is 
to be found not a single mention of his name. 
There was no place at the Hone table for the 
shabby, impossible genius. There was an im- 
passable gulf between the well-ordered household 
facing the City Hall Park, or at the Broadway 
and Great Jones Street corner, and the humble 
Carmine Street lodging, or the Fordham Cottage. 
Early references to Fenimore Cooper, whom Hone 
first met at an American dinner to Lafayette in 
Paris in 1831, are gracious enough, for the creator 
of Leather-Stocking was a personage, and it 
suited Hone to stand well with personages. But 
when, seven years later, Cooper returned to the 
United States after his long stay abroad, and 
incurred the displeasure of his fellow-countrymen. 
Hone was quite ready to join in the hue and cry. 

With Washington Irving it was another mat- 
ter. But who could have failed to feel genial 

ri- 55~i- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

towards the quiet, scholarly, altogether charming 
gentleman of Sunnyside? Also the legs of Irving 
fitted well and often under the Hone mahogany, 
and the part of the author that was perceptible 
above the table gave a flavour and dignity to 
the board. Somehow we see Hone's cheeks puffed 
out with pride as he chronicles: "My old friend, 
Washington Irving, who visits his native country 
after an absence of seventeen years. I passed 
half an hour with him very pleasantly." " I have 
devoted nearly the whole day to Washington 
Irvmg." " Irving and I left them and came to 
town to meet friends whom I had engaged to dine 
with me." " Washington Irving acquainted me 
with a circumstance, etc." " We next visited 
Washington Irving, who lives with his sister and 
nieces on the bank of the river." Any one who 
reads the Diary can see that Hone thoroughly 
approA^ed of Irving. But just what, in his heart 
of hearts, did Irving think of Hone? 

The Diary gives some significant glimpses of 
Charles Dickens in America. In 1842 New York 
welcomed the Enghshman riotousty. Washington 
laughed at New York for doing too much and 
went to the other extreme. John Quincy Adams 
gave the Dickenses a dinner at which Hone was 
a guest. " Some clever people were invited to 
meet them " is the way the ingenuous Hone puts 
it. " They " (Dickens and Mrs. Dickens) " came. 



A KNICKERBOCKER PEPYS 

he in a frock-coat, and she in her honnet. They 
sat at table until four o'clock, when he said: 
* Dear, it is time for us to go home and dress 
for dinner.' They were engaged to dine with 
Robert Greenhow at the fashionable hour of half- 
past five! A most particularly funny idea to 
leave the table of John Quincy Adams to dress 
for a dinner at Robert Greenhow's!" Hone re- 
ferred to the visitors as " The Boz and Bozess," 
and described the author of " Pickwick " as " a 
small, bright-eyed, intelligent-looking young fel- 
low, thirty years of age, somewhat of a dandy in 
his dress, with ' rings and things and fine array,' 
brisk in his manner, and of a lively conversa- 
tion "; and Mrs. Dickens as " a little, fat, English- 
looking woman, of an agreeable countenance, and, 
I should think, ' a nice person.' " 

Dickens was not the only British author of 
those days to kindle the flames of American re- 
sentment. Almost all who came to our shores 
seemed to possess the faculty of " getting a rise " 
out of Yankee sensibilities. Captain Marry at was 
one of the offenders. At a dinner in Toronto he 
gave an injudicious toast. Thereupon the town 
of Lewistown, Maine, built a huge bonfire on 
the shore directly opposite Queenstown and de- 
stroyed all the " Midshipman Easys," " Peter 
Simples," " Japhets," and "Jacob Faithfuls" 
that could be obtained. Hone commented sensi- 

-i-z 57 r-i-. 



FIFTH AVENUE 

bly on the affair in his Diary for May 5, 1838. 
" Captain Marryat, I dare say, made a fool of 
himself (not a very difficult task, I should judge, 
from what I have seen of him) ; but the Lewis- 
townians have beaten him all to smash, as the 
Kentuckians say. How mortified he must have 
been to hear that his books had been burned after 
they were paid for! " A year before Marryat had 
dined at the Hone house in New York and the 
host wrote: " The lion. Captain Marryat, is no 
great things of a lion, after all. In truth, the 
author of ' Peter Simple ' and ' Jacob Faithful ' 
is a very every-day sort of a man. He carries 
about him in his manner and conversation more 
of the sailor than the author, has nothing student- 
like in his appearance, and savours more of the 
binnacle lamp than of the study." And again, 
six months after the Lewistown flare-up : "It 
would have been better for both parties if the 
sailor author had been known on this side of the 
Atlantic only by his writings ... he has evi- 
dently not enjoyed the benefits of refined society, 
or intercourse with people of literary talents." 

The Knickerbocker Pepys grew mellower as he 
advanced in years. There is a marked change in 
the tone of the Diary dating from the very time 
when he himself suffered financial reverses. It 
was the test of the man that misfortune did not 
embitter him, but made him more kindly in his 

-?- 68-*- 



A KNICKERBOCKER PEPYS 

judgments of those about him. The smug self- 
satisfaction belonged to the early days. In the 
closing years of his useful life there was but one 
thing that disturbed him greatly. He foresaw 
the Deluge that was to come. December 12, 1850, 
was his last Thanksgiving. He wrote: "The 
annual time-honoured Thanksgiving-day through- 
out the state. No nation, ancient or modern, 
ever had more causes for thanksgiving, and rea- 
sons to praise the Author of all good, than the 
people of the United States. Yet there are many, 
at the present time, ignorant and unworthy of the 
blessings they enjoy, who would throw all things 
into confusion, break up the blessed Union which 
binds the States, and should bind the individuals 
forming their population; who would destroy the 
harmony, and condemn the obligations, of Con- 
stitution and law. Factionists, traitors, madmen 
— the Lord preserve us from the unholy influence 
of such principles ! " 



69 



CHAPTER IV 

Glimpses of the Sixties 

Glimpses of the Sixties — At the " Sign of the Buck-horn " — 
Madison Square in Civil War Times — A Contemporary 
Chronicler — Mushroom Fortunes — Foreign Adventurers — 
Filling the Ballroom — Brown of Grace Church — Sunshine 
and Shadow — The Avenue and the Five Points — The Old 
Bowery — Blackmail- — The Haunts of Chance — Two Famous 
Poems, William Allen Butler's " Nothing to Wear," and 
Edmund Clarence Stedman's " The Diamond Wedding." 

It seems but yesterday that the old Fifth Avenue 
Hotel passed to the limbo of bygone things. 
When " Victoria's Royal Son " came to visit us 
it was new and stately, and held by loyal patriots 
to be something for strangers from beyond the 
seas to behold and wonder at. But before the 
hotel there had been a famous tavern on the site, 
and then a hippodrome. 

" Can it be true," wrote Mrs. Schuyler Van 
Rennselaer in an article in the " Century Maga- 
zine " many years ago, " that I dreamily remem- 
ber a canvas hippodrome where the Fifth Avenue 
Hotel stands? Kids curvetting in idiotic pride 
over imaginary mountain peaks on the rough 
ground of what is Madison Square? Can it be 
true that when we looked from our nursery win- 

-e-60-i- 



GLIMPSES OF THE SIXTIES 

dows towards Sixteenth Street we saw, on a lot 
foolishly called vacant, the most interesting of 
possible houses, an abandoned street-car, fitted 
with a front door and a chimney pot, and in- 
habited by an Irish family of considerable size ? " 
That delightful Swiss Family Robinson-hke habi- 
tation may have been a creation of Mrs. Van 
Rennselaer's fancy, but Franconi's Hippodrome 
was an historical fact, and the tavern that she 
remembers was Corporal Thompson's Madison 
Cottage, where, at the " Sign of the Buck-horn," 
trotting men gathered. When Fifth Avenue was 
in its infancy Madison Square still recalled the 
name of Tieman's, and in the centre there was a 
House of Refuge for sinful boys. At the Square 
the old Boston Post Road for a moment touched 
what was afterwards to be the Avenue before it 
twisted off in a northeasterly direction. 

Corporal Thompson's establishment was a 
diminutive frame cottage, surrounded by what 
might be called " a five acre lot," which was used, 
when used at all, for cattle exhibitions. It was, 
Mr. Dayton recorded, " the last stopping place 
for codgers, old and young. Laverty, Winans, 
Niblo, the Costers, Hones, Whitneys, Schermer- 
horns, Sol Kipp, Doctor Vache, Ogden Hoffman, 
'Nat Blount, and scores more of bon vivants, hail 
fellows well met, would here end their ride for 
the day by ' smihng ' with the worthy Corporal, 

4-61-?- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

and wash down any of their former improprieties 
with a sip of his ne plus ultra, which was always 
kept in reserve for a special nightcap. There was 
a special magnetism about the snug little bar- 
room, always trim as a lady's boudoir, which 
induced the desire to tarry awhile, as if that visit 
were destined to be the last; so it frequently hap- 
pened that a jolly party was compelled to grope 
slowly homewards through the unlighted, gloomy 
road that led to the city." 

But all that has been in the days before. By 
the time that the Fifth Avenue Hotel had been 
firmly established on the site of the Buck-horn, 
the corner had become the centre of the new 
town. Across the Square, at the northeast angle, 
on the site of the building now capped by the 
figure of Diana, was a low, sordid shed. It was 
the Harlem Railroad Station. There, from one 
side started the cars for Boston, and from the 
other, the cars for Albany. Cars, not trains, for 
horses were the motive power as far as Thirty- 
second Street. There engines were attached in 
the open street. Later, the horses ran through 
the tunnel as far as Forty-second Street where 
the Grand Central Station now stands. In the 
Square the Worth Monument had been erected 
in 1857, and on the east side of the park, then 
enclosed by a high railing, was the brown church 
which dated from 1854. That decade from 1860 

■<-62-*- 



GLIMPSES OF THE SIXTIES 

to 1870 was one of constant changes and shiftings. 
The New England soldier who marched through 
the town on his way to the front in 1861 rubbed 
his eyes a little when he passed through it again 
homeward bound after the surrender of Lee's 
army at Appomattox Court House had brought 
the War of Secession to a close. The last vestige 
of Knickerbocker life had disappeared forever. 

It had been, and still was, an era of extrava- 
gant speculation. Mushroom fortunes were 
springing up, and their possessors, as socially 
ambitious as they were socially inept, invaded 
Fifth Avenue strong in the belief in the all- 
conquering power of the Almighty Dollar. In 
most cases they did not last long. But they 
served a purpose. They erected the splendid 
houses on the Avenue that a few years later the 
clubs were to occupy and enjoy. Of the clubs that 
were on the Avenue in 1868, a contemporary 
chronicler wrote that nearly every one recorded 
the brief life of a New York aristocrat. " A 
lucky speculation, a sudden rise in real estate," 
so runs the rhetorical statement, " a new turn of 
the wheel-of -fortune, lifts the man who yesterday 
could not be trusted for his dinner, and gives 
him a place among men of wealth. He buys a 
lot on Fifth Avenue, puts up a palatial resi- 
dence, outdoing all who have gone before him; 
sports his gay team in Central Park, carpets his 

-f-63-!- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

sidewalk, gives two or three parties, and disap- 
pears from society. His family return to the 
sphere from which they were taken, and the man- 
sion, with its gorgeous furniture, becomes a club- 
house." Perhaps this picture should be regarded 
with a certain restraint. The observer was an 
up-state minister, looking for the excesses, wicked- 
nesses, and extravagances of the great city. His 
judgment may have been as faulty as his style. 

But, if merely for the sake of learning a cer- 
tain point of view, it is amusing to turn over 
those old volumes dealing with the sunshine and 
shadow of the city of the sixties. High Life and 
Money ocracy, we are told, were synonymous. To 
use the Tennysonian line, " Every door was 
barred with gold, and opened but to golden keys." 
" If you wish parties, soirees, balls, that are ele- 
gant, attractive, and genteel (how they loved those 
dreadful adjectives ' elegant ' and ' genteel '!) you 
will not find them among the snobbish clique, 
who, with nothing but money, attempt to rule 
New York." The words are of the clerical visitor 
before quoted. " Talent, taste, and refinement 
do not dwell with these. But high life has no 
passport except money. If a man has this, though 
destitute of character and brains, he is made 
welcome. One may come from Botany Bay or 
St. James; with a ticket-of-leave from a penal 
colony or St. Cloud; if he has diamond rings and 

-*- 64 -»- 



GLIMPSES OF THE SIXTIES 

a coach, all places will be open to him. The 
leaders of upper New York were, a few years 
ago, porters, stable boys, coal-heavers, pickers of 
rags, scrubbers of floors, and laundry women. 
Coarse, rude, uncivil, and immoral many of them 
still are. Lovers of pleasure and men of fashion 
bow and cringe to such, and approach hat in 
hand. One of our new-fledged millionaires gave 
a ball in his stable. The invited came with tokens 
of delight. The host, a few years ago, was a 
ticket-taker at one of our ferries, and would have 
thankfully blacked the boots or done any menial 
service for the people who clamour for the honour 
of his hand. At the gate of Central Park, every 
day splendid coaches may be seen, in which sit 
large, fat, coarse women, who carry with them 
the marks of the wash-tub." That was the kind 
of hot shot that the rural districts wanted from 
those they sent to look into the iniquities of the 
Metropolis. At once it made them sit up and 
filled them with a sense of their own sanctity. 

According to the same ingenuous chronicler, 
the most famous figure in the social life of the 
New York of the sixties, the later Petronius, or 
the forerunner of Mr. Ward McAllister, was 
Brown, the sexton of Grace Church, which, for 
many years, had been the fashionable centre. 
" Arrogant old Isaac Brown," Mrs. Burton Har- 
rison called him in her " Recollections, Grave and 



FIFTH AVENUE 

Gay," " the portly sexton who transmitted invita- 
tions for the elect, protested to one of his pa- 
tronesses that he really could not undertake to 
' run society ' beyond Fiftieth Street. To be 
married or buried within Grace Church's walls 
was considered the height of felicity. It was 
Brown who passed on worthiness in life or death. 
He arranged the parties, engineered the bridals, 
conducted the funerals. The Lenten season is a 
horribly dull season, but we manage to make 
our funerals as entertaining as possible " — Brown 
said, according to the quoted story. Without 
Brown no Fifth Avenue function was complete. 
" A fashionable lady, about to have a fashionable 
gathering at her house, orders her meats from 
the butcher, her supplies from the grocer, her 
cakes and ices from the confectioner; but her 
invitations she puts in the hands of Brown. He 
knows whom to invite and whom to omit. He 
knows who will come, who will not come, but 
will send regrets. In case of a pinch, he can fill 
up the list with young men, picked up about 
town, in black swallow-tailed coats, white vests, 
and white cravats, who, in consideration of a fine 
supper and a dance, will allow themselves to be 
passed off as the sons of distinguished New 
Yorkers. The city has any quantity of ragged 
noblemen, seedy lords from Germany, Hungarian 
Barons out at the elbow, members of the Euro- 

-*- 66 -J- 



GLIMPSES OF THE SIXTIES 

pean aristocracy who left their country for their 
country's good, who can be served up in proper 
proportions at a fashionable party when the occa- 
sion demands it. No man knows their haunts 
better than Brown." 

Here is a picture of the famous Brown, drawn 
by the same pen: 

" Brown is a huge fellow, coarse in his features, 
resembling a dressed up carman. His face is 
very red, and on Sundays he passes up and down 
the aisles of Grace Church with a peculiar swag- 
ger. He bows strangers into a pew, when he 
deigns to give them a seat, with a majestic and 
patronizing air designed to impress them with a 
relishing sense of the obligation he has conferred 
upon them." 

Later Peter Marie wrote the poem, " Brown of 
Grace Church," beginning: 

" O glorious Brown ! thou medley strange, 
Of church-yard, ball-room, saint and sinner. 
Flying in morn through fashion's range, 
And burying mortals after dinner. 
Walking one day with invitations, 
Passing the next with consecrations." 

This is the eloquent story of Mr. and Mrs. 
Newly-Rich who did not seek the social chaperon- 
age of the all-powerful Brown. He had been a 
reputable and successful hatter. She had made 
vests for a fashionable tailor. By a turn of fortune 

-i- 67 -+• 



FIFTH AVENUE 

they found themselves rich. He gave up hatting 
and she abandoned vests. They bought a house on 
upper Fifth Avenue and proposed to storm so- 
ciety by giving a large party. The acquaintances 
of the humbler days were to be ignored. It was 
guests from another world that were wanted. 
But instead of going to Brown and slipping him 
a handsome fee, Mr. and Mrs. Newly-Rich took 
the Directory, selected five hundred names, among 
them some of the most prominent persons of the 
city, and sent out invitations. The first caterer 
of the town laid the table. Dodsworth was en- 
gaged for the music. The result is easy to guess. 
The brilliantly lighted house, the silent bell, the 
over-dressed mother and daughter sitting hour 
after hour in lonely, heartbroken magnificence. 
But save for its association with the omnipotent 
Brown, it is the story, not of the sixties in par- 
ticular, but of any decade of social New York. 

It may be worth while to follow the critic from 
up-state in some of his venturesome explorations 
of other parts of New York. Those to whom he 
was to return, those for whose entertainment and 
instruction his book was written, wanted to hear 
of the shadows as well as the sunshine. It was 
the picture of a very sinful metropolis that they 
demanded, and the author was bound that he was 
not going to disappoint them. 

The frontispiece of the book shows the Stewart 
-J- 68 -J- 



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GLIMPSES OF THE SIXTIES 

Mansion at the corner of Thirty-fourth Street 
and Fifth Avenue, and by contrast, the Old Brew- 
ery at the Five Points. Before the Mission was 
opened the Five Points was a dangerous locahty, 
the resort of burglars, thieves, and desperadoes, 
with dark, underground chambers, where mur- 
derers often hid, where policemen seldom went, 
and never unarmed. A good citizen going through 
the neighbourhood after dark was sure to be as- 
saulted, beaten, and probably robbed. Nightly 
the air was filled with the sound of brawling. 
Wretchedness, drunkenness, and suffering stalked 
abroad. There were such rookeries as Cow Bay 
and Murderer's Alley, the latter of which con- 
tinued to exist, though its sinister glory had long 
since departed, until fifteen or twenty years ago. 
The lodging houses of the section were under- 
ground, without ventilation, without windows, 
overrun with rats and vermin. 

For diversion the miserable denizens of the 
quarter sought the near-by Bowery, with its bril- 
liantly lighted drinking dens, its concert halls, 
where negro minstrelsy was featured, and its 
theatres where the plays were immoral comedies 
or melodramas glorifying the exploits of pic- 
turesque criminals. News-boys, street-sweepers, 
rag-pickers, begging girls filled the galleries of 
these places of amusement. Here is the clerical 
visitor's description of the thoroughfare that was 

-e- 69-+ 



FIFTH AVENUE 

then the second principal street of the city: 
" Leaving the City Hall about six o'clock on 
Sunday night, and walking through Chatham 
Square to the Bowery, one would not believe that 
New York had any claim to be a Christian city, 
or that the Sabbath had any friends. The shops 
are open, and trade is brisk. Abandoned females 
go in swarms, and crowd the sidewalk. Their 
dress, manner, and language indicate that de- 
pravity can go no lower. Young men known as 
Irish-Americans, who wear as a badge long frock- 
coats, crowd the corners of the streets, and insult 
the passer-by. Women from the windows arrest 
attention by loud calls to the men on the side- 
walk, and jibes, profanity, and bad words pass 
between the parties. Sunday theatres, concert- 
saloons, and places of amusement are in full blast. 
The Italians and Irish shout out their joy from 
the rooms they occupy. The click of the billiard 
ball, and the booming of the ten-pin alley, are 
distinctly heard. Before night, victims watched 
for will be secured; men heated with liquor, or 
drugged, will be robbed, and many curious and 
bold explorers in this locality will curse the hour 
in which they resolved to spend a Sunday in the 
Bowery." 

To find adventure and danger the rural visitor 
did not have to seek out the Bowery and the 
adjacent streets to the east and west. Adroit 

-e-70-j- 



GLIMPSES OF THE SIXTIES 

rogues were everywhere. Bland gentlemen intro- 
duced themselves to unwary strangers. Instead 
of the mining stock or the sick engineer's story 
of our more enlightened and refined age, these 
pleasant urbanites resorted to the cruder weapon 
of blackmail. The art was reduced to a system. 
Terrible warnings were conveyed to the innocent 
country-side by the chronicler in such sub-heads 
as " A Widower Blackmailed," " A Minister Falls 
among Thieves," " Blackmailers at a Wedding," 
" A Bride Called On." 

Darkly the investigator painted the gambling 
evil of the New York of the sixties. The dens 
of chance were in aristocratic neighbourhoods and 
superbly appointed. Heavy blinds or curtains, 
kept drawn all day, hid the inmates from prying 
eyes. Within, rosewood doors, deep carpets, and 
mirrors of magnificent dimensions. The dinner 
table spread with silver and gold plate, costly 
chinaware, and glass of exquisite cut: the viands 
embracing the luxuries of the season and the 
wines of the choicest. " None but men who be- 
have like gentlemen are allowed the entree of 
the rooms " is the naive comment. " Play runs 
on by the hour, and not a word spoken save the 
low words of the parties who conduct the game. 
But for the implements of gaming there is little 
to distinguish the room from a first-class club- 
house. Gentlemen well known on ' change ' and 

-K 71 -^ 



FIFTH AVENUE 

in public life, merchants of a high grade, whose 
names adorn charitable and benevolent associa- 
tions, are seen in these rooms, reading and talk- 
ing. Some drink only a glass of wine, walk 
about, and look on the play with apparently but 
little curiosity. The great gamblers, besides those 
of the professional ring, are men accustomed to 
the excitement of the Stock Board. They gam- 
ble all day in Wall and Broad Streets, and all 
night on Broadway. To one not accustomed to 
such a sight, it is rather startling to see men 
whose names stand high in church and state, who 
are well dressed and leaders of fashion, in these 
notable saloons, as if they were at home." Con- 
spicuous among the keepers of the gambling hells 
was John Morrissey, who had begun life as the 
proprietor of a low drinking den in Troy, and as 
a step in the march of prosperity, had fought 
Heenan, the Benicia Boy, for the championship 
of Canada. He was a personality of the city of 
the sixties. The author of the curious volume 
thought it necessary to tell of his career as he told 
of the career of A. T. Stewart, and Henry Ward 
Beecher, and the particular Astor of the day, 
and the particular Vanderbilt, Fernando Wood, 
and Leonard W. Jerome, and George Law, and 
James Gordon Bennett, the elder, and Daniel 
Drew, and General Halpin, and half a dozen more 
of the town's celebrities. 

H-72-J- 



GLIMPSES OF THE SIXTIES 

The Franconi Hippodrome on the Fifth Avenue 
Hotel site had become a memory, but far down- 
town Barnum's Museum was flourishing, with the 
doors open from sunrise till ten at night. Early 
visitors from the country inspected the gallery 
of curiosities before sitting down to breakfast. 
The great showman was living in a brown-stone 
house on Fifth Avenue, at the corner of Thirty- 
ninth Street. He was approaching his sixtieth 
year, and had retired from active life, although 
he still held the controUing interest in the Mu- 
seum. A. T. Stewart was living in the white 
stone home he had erected at Thirty-fourth 
Street. James Gordon Bennett's city residence 
was on the Avenue at Thirty-eighth Street. In 
fact, with a few notable exceptions who still clung 
to their downtown homes, such as the Astors and 
the Vanderbilts, all the great money kings of the 
decade were gathering in the upper stretches of 
the ripening thoroughfare. But the descendants 
of the Patroons held to the sweep from Wash- 
ington Square to Fourteenth Street, or to lower 
Second Avenue, which, to the eyes of its " set," 
embracing a number of old-school families of 
Colonial ancestry, was the " Faubourg St. Ger- 
main " of New York. 

In every other memoir touching on the New 
York of the sixties will be found an allusion to 
the Flora McFlimseys. For example, Mr. W. 

-i- 73 -J- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

D. Howells, in " Literary Friends and Acquaint- 
ances," told of his first visit to the city at the 
time of the Civil War. After Chnton Place was 
passed, he wrote: " Commerce was just beginning 
to show itself in Union Square, and Madison 
Square was still the home of the McFlimsies, 
whose kin and kind dwelt unmolested in the 
brown-stone stretches of Fifth Avenue." There 
are two poems linked with the story of New York. 
They are Edmund Clarence Stedman's " The 
Diamond Wedding," and " Nothing to AVear," 
and the William Allen Butler verses, beginning: 

" Miss Flora McFlimsey, of Madison Square 
Has made three separate journeys to Paris. 
And her father assures me, each time she was there, 
That she and her friend Mrs. Harris 
(Not the lady whose name is so famous in history. 
But plain Mrs. H., without romance or mystery) 
Spent six consecutive weeks, without stopping. 
In one continuous round of shopping — " 

were the very spirit of the Fifth Avenue of that 
day. Butler wrote the poem in 1857, in a house 
in Fourteenth Street, within a stone's throw of 
the Avenue. After finishing it, and reading it to 
his wife, he took it one evening to No. 20 Chnton 
Place, to try it on his friend, Evart A. 
Duyckinck. Not only did the verses themselves 
have a Fifth Avenue inspiration and origin, but 
the woman who later claimed that she had written 
the nine first lines and thirty of the concluding 

-e- 74 -f- 



GLIMPSES OF THE SIXTIES 

lines, told in her story that she had dropped 
the mamiscript while passing through a crowd 
at Fifth Avenue and Madison Square. It was 
a famous case in its day, and the claimant found 
supporters, just as the absurd Tichborne Claimant 
found supporters. But Butler's right to " Noth- 
ing to Wear " was fully substantiated. Horace 
Greeley made the controversy the subject of a 
vigorous editorial in the " Tribune," and " Har- 
per's Weekly," in which the poem had originally 
appeared, pointed out that although the verses 
were published in February, the spurious claim 
was not put forward until July. Writing of 
" Nothing to Wear " forty years later, W. D. 
Howells said: 

" For the student of our literature ' Nothing to 
Wear ' has the interest and value of satire in 
which our society life came to its full conscious- 
ness for the first time. To be sure there had been 
the studies of New York called ' The Potiphar 
Papers,' in which Curtis had painted the foolish 
and unlovely face of our fashionable life, but with 
always an eye on other methods and other models; 
and ' Nothing to Wear ' came with the authority 
and the appeal of something quite indigenous in 
matter and manner. It came winged, and 
equipped to fly wide and to fly far, as only verse 
can, with a message for the grand-children of 
' Flora McFlimsey,' which it delivers today in 
perfectly intelligible terms. 

" It does not indeed find her posterity in Madison 
Square. That quarter has long since been deliv- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

ered over to hotels and shops and offices, and the 
fashion that once abode there has fled to upper 
Fifth Avenue, to the discordant variety of hand- 
some residences which overlook the Park. But it 
finds her descendants quite one with her in spirit, 
and as little clothed to their lasting satisfaction." 

The nuptials that Edmund Clarence Stedman 
satirized in " The Diamond Wedding " united 
Miss Frances Amelia Bartlett and the Marquis 
Don Estaban de Santa Cruz de Oviedo, and were 
held in October, 1859, under the direction of 
" the fat and famous Brown, Sexton of Grace 
Church." Miss Bartlett, a tall and willowy blonde, 
still in her teens, was the daughter of a retired 
lieutenant in the United States lN'a\'y. The Bart- 
lett home was in West Fourteenth Street, a few 
doors from the Avenue. The groom, many years 
the bride's senior, and of strikingly unprepossess- 
ing appearance, was a Cuban of great wealth. 
The wedding was the talk of the town, and 
Stedman, then a young man of twenty-six, sati- 
rized the ill-mating in a poem that appeared first 
in the New York "Tribune." The poem began: 

" I need not tell. 
How it befell; 

(Since Jenkins has told the story"' 
Over and over and over again, 
And covered himself with glory!) 
How it befell, one summer's day, 
The King of the Cubans passed that way, 
King January's his name, they say, 
And fell in love with the Princess May, 
The reigning belle of Manhattan. 



GLIMPSES OF THE SIXTIES 

Nor how he began to smirk and sue. 

And dress as lovers who come to woo. 

Or as Max Maretzek or Jullien do, 

When they sit, full bloomed, in the ladies' view, 

And flourish the wondrous baton. 

He wasn't one of your Polish nobles. 

Whose presence their country somehow troubles, 

And so our cities receive them; 

Nor one of your make-believe Spanish grandees. 

Who ply our daughters with lies and candies. 

Until the poor girls believe them. 

No, he was no such charlatan. 

Count de Hoboken Flash-in-the-pan. 

Full of Gasconade and bravado, 

But a regular, rich Don Rataplan, 

Santa Claus de la Muscavado, 

Senor Grandissimo Bastinado. 

His was the rental of half Havana, 

And all Matanzas ; and Santa Anna — " 

Famous as the wedding had been, the verses 
became more so. They were copied into the 
weekly and tri- weekly issues of the " Tribune," 
and into the evening papers. Stedman, in later 
years, told of being startled by a huge signboard 
in front of the then young Brentano's, opposite 
the New York Hotel, at the corner of Broadway 
and Waverly Place, reading: "Read Stedman's 
great poem on the Diamond Wedding in this 
evening's ' Express ' ! " The father of the bride, 
infuriated by the unpleasant publicity, challenged 
the poet to a duel, which never took place. Years 
later Stedman and the woman he had lampooned 
met and became the best of friends. 



77 



CHAPTER V 

Fourteenth to Madison Square 

Stretches of the Avenue — Fourteenth to Madison Square — 
From Brevoort to Spingler — The Story of Sir Peter Warren 
— The First City Hospital — The Paternoster Row of New 
York — Former Homes and Birthplaces — Lower Fifth Avenue 
Residents in the Fifties — Blocks of Departed Glories — The 
Centre of the Universe — Madison Square in Colonial Days — 
Franconi's Hippodrome — The Opening of the Fifth Avenue 
Hotel — A Thanksgiving Day of the Nineties — Monuments 
of the Square — The Garden, the Presbyterian Church, and 
the Metropolitan Tower — The Face of the Clock. 

In 1762, a Brevoort — Elias was his Christian 
name — sold a part of the family farm to John 
Smith, a wealthy slave-holder. On the choicest 
site of the purchase, now the centre of Fourteenth 
Street just west of Fifth Avenue, Smith built his 
country residence. After he died his widow con- 
tinued to occupy the house until 1788, when the 
executors of Smith's estate, among whom was 
James Duane, Mayor of the city, sold the prop- 
erty for about four thousand seven hundred dol- 
lars to Henry Spingler. Spingler lived in the 
house until his death in 1813, and used the land, 
comprising about twenty-two acres, as a market 
garden farm. Spingler 's granddaughter, Mrs. 
Mary S. Van Beuren, fell heiress to most of the 

•^-78rH 



FOURTEENTH TO MADISON SQUARE 

property, and built the Van Beuren brown-stone 
front house on Fourteenth Street, where she hved 
for years, and maintained a httle garden with 
flowers and vegetables, a cow and chickens. In 
the fifty-seven years between the Smith sale and 
1845 the value of the estate had increased from 
four thousand seven hundred dollars to two hun- 
dred thousand dollars. Keeping still to the bucolic 
days of the Avenue, we pass, going from Fifteenth 
to Eighteenth Street, through what was the farm 
of Thomas and Edward Burling, relatives of 
John and James Burling, old-time merchants 
whose name was given to Burhng Slip, down by 
the East River. Also in the course of these blocks 
the Avenue crosses land that was the farm of 
John Cowman until 1836. Between Eighteenth 
and Twenty-first Streets was part of the farm 
acquired in 1791 by Isaac Varian, who bought 
from the heirs of Sir Peter Warren. 

This Sir Peter Warren was one of the great 
figures of the old town. Many have written of 
him. It was only a year or so ago that Miss 
Chapin devoted to his story a chapter of her 
book on Greenwich Village. So here the outline 
of his career will be of the briefest possible na- 
ture. It was in 1728 that he first saw New York 
Harbour. He was twenty-five years of age then, 
and in command of the frigate " Solebay." Irish 
to the core, a Warren of Warrenstown, County 

-i-79-i- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

Meath, who got their estates in the time of 
" Strongbow," he had already seen a dozen years 
of active service in southern and African waters, 
and as captain of the " Grafton," had had a 
share in the seizure of the rock of Gibraltar by 
the British. But New York was his first official 
post, and here he had been sent at the orders 
of the home government, to keep an eye on events, 
and to sound the loyalty of the American colonies. 
The little island above the great bay and between 
the two broad rivers won his heart from the first, 
and after every new adventure he returned to it, 
until, in 1747, he was summoned to London, to 
enter Parliament and to be made Admiral of the 
Red Squadron. The affection for the town seems 
to have been reciprocal, for two years after his 
introduction to New York, the Common Council 
of the city voted to him the " freedom of the 
city." Then, when he was twenty-eight years old 
he married Susanna DeLancey, whose father, 
Etienne DeLancey, was a Huguenot refugee, 
who, settling here, soon changed the Etienne to 
Stephen, and married a daughter of one of the 
Dutch Van Cortlandts. At first the young War- 
rens hved downtown, but in later years, when 
wealth came as the result of treasure-seeking ad- 
venture on the high seas, Peter bought lands in 
Greenwich Village, and eventually there erected 
a great mansion. 

-t~80~h 



FOURTEENTH TO MADISON SQUARE 

Throughout the 1730's he was busy, but his 
opportunity did not come until the end of that 
decade. In 1739 trouble broke out between Great 
Britain and Spain. Five years later Captain 
Warren was fabulously rich. Early in 1744 he 
had been made commodore of a sixteen-ship 
squadron in the Caribbean. Before summer of 
that year he had captured twenty-four French 
and Spanish merchant ships, had brought them 
to New York, turned them over to his father-in- 
law's firm, " Messieurs Stephen De Lancey and 
Company," and had pocketed the proceeds of the 
sale. His " French and Spanish swag," is the 
way Thomas A. Janvier expressed it. Of the 
house in Greenwich Village on land that is 
bounded by the present Charles, Perry, Bleecker, 
and Tenth Streets, Janvier wrote: "The house 
stood about three hundred yards back from the 
river, on ground which fell away in a gentle slope 
towards the waterside. The main entrance was 
from the east; and at the rear — on the level of 
the drawing room and a dozen feet or so above 
the sloping hillside — was a broad veranda com- 
manding the view westward to the Jersey High- 
lands and southward down the bay to the Staten 
Island Hills." After Sir Peter Warren went 
away the Manse became the home of Abraham 
Van Nest, and stood there more than a century. 
Not until 1865 did it entirely disappear. 

-i-81-«- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

In 1745 Warren played a part in the Siege of 
Louisbourg that won him promotion to the rank 
of Rear Admiral of the Blue, and his knighthood. 
New York, for his share in the exploit, voted him 
some extra land. In August, 1747, he was in 
command of the " Devonshire " at the naval battle 
off Cape Finisterre, capturing the ship of the 
French Commodore, " La Joncquiere." Then 
came his recall to England, where, on account of 
his vast wealth and famous achievements, he was 
a conspicuous figure. One of his daughters, 
Charlotte, married Willoughby, Earl of Abing- 
don. Another, Ann, became the wife of Charles 
Fitzroy, Baron Southampton. The youngest, 
Susanna, after her mother, was wedded to Colonel 
Skinner. New York's affection and esteem for 
Sir Peter Warren extended to his daughters and 
through them to their husbands. The old name of 
Christopher Street was Skinner Road. There was 
a Fitzroy Road that ran northward from Four- 
teenth Street. Then, still existing, is Abingdon 
Square, and Abingdon Road, better known as 
" Love Lane," was somewhere in the neighbour- 
hood of the present Twenty-first Street. It is 
to the past rather than the present that the 
student of the Avenue turns in contemplating 
the stretch between Fourteenth and Twenty- 
second Streets. Here and there an historical 
point may be indicated. On Sixteenth Street, a 

-J-82-*- 



FOURTEENTH TO MADISON SQUARE 

few yards to the west, is the New York Hospital, 
the oldest in the city. It received its charter from 
George the Third some years before the first gun 
was fired in the War of the Revolution. It was 
not regularly opened until 1791, but the building, 
then at Broadway and Duane Street, served as a 
place for anatomical experiments. In 1788, the 
story is, a medical student threatened a group of 
prying boys with a dissected human arm. Soldiers 
were needed to quell the resulting riot. The 
reddish brick hospital of today dates from 1877. 
A chapter in the story of the New York Hospital 
as an institution concerns the Bloomingdale Luna- 
tic Asylum, for which the land was purchased in 
1816, and the building completed in 1821. 

Respectively at 150 and 156 Fifth Avenue are 
the building of the New York Society of the 
Methodist Church and the Presbyterian Building. 
The latter houses the Methodist Book Concern 
and a collection of relics belonging to the His- 
torical Society. A few years ago the stretch was 
sometimes called the Paternoster Row of New 
York on account of the number of publishing 
houses that lined it. Also it was long the home 
of many of the churches that were erected in the 
middle of the last century, among them the South 
Dutch Reformed Church, built in 1850, at the 
southwest corner of Twenty-first Street, and the 
Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church at Nineteenth 

-f- 83 -^ 



FIFTH AVENUE 

Street. In Nineteenth Street, just east of the 
Avenue, was the former home of Horace Greeley, 
and in Twentieth Street (No. 28) Theodore 
Roosevelt was born. 

"Worth noting," says "Fifth Avenue," the 
publication issued by the Fifth Avenue Bank, 
" are the names of prominent New Yorkers who, 
during the fifties, lived on Fifth Avenue between 
Washington Square and Twenty-first Street. 
Among them were Lispenard Stewart, Thomas 
Eggleson, Silas Wood, Henry C. De Rham, 
Thomas F. Woodruff, Francis Cottinet, David S. 
Kennedy, James Donaldson, Dr. J. Kearney 
Rodgers, C. N. Talbot, N. H. Wolfe, James 
McBride, Charles M. Parker, L. M. Hoffman, 
August Belmont, Benjamin Aymer, Henry C. 
Winthrop, Eugene Schiff, Captain Lorillard 
Spencer, Moses Taylor, John C. Coster, Henry 
A. Coster, Sidney Mason, Marshall O. Roberts, 
Robert L. Cutting, Gordon W. Burnham, Robert 
C. Townsend, George Opdyke, Robert L. Stuart, 
whose magnificent art collection was given to the 
Lenox Library, and James Lenox, the founder 
of the Lenox Library. The fortunes of these 
gentlemen as recorded in * Wealth and Biog- 
raphy of the Wealthy Citizens of New York,' 
averaged between one hundred and three hundred 
thousand dollars. One of the richest men in New 
York at that time was James Lenox, who had 

-^84-i- 



FOURTEENTH TO MADISON SQUARE 

inherited the then huge fortune of three million 
dollars; another large fortune was that of James 
McBride, estimated at seven hundred thousand 
doUars." 

Then there were the clubs, the Union at the 
northwest corner of Twenty-first Street, the Lotos 
Club, just across the Avenue, the Athenaeum, 
at the southwest corner of Sixteenth Street, the 
Travellers; in the building that had formerly been 
the residence of Gordon W. Burnham, at the 
southwest corner of Eighteenth Street, the Ar- 
cadian, at No. 146, between Nineteenth and 
Twentieth Streets, the Manhattan, occupying the 
Charles C. Parker house at the southwest corner 
of Fifteenth Street, the New York, which, occupy- 
ing another corner at the same street, until 1874, 
then moved a few blocks northward to a house 
on the Avenue facing Madison Square. How the 
window loungers of that clubland stretch of the 
seventies and eighties would have stared and 
rubbed their eyes had it been given to them to 
see the procession that throngs the sidewalks 
today ! 

The stretch of glories departed is quickly passed. 
The nine blocks are really eight, for it is at 
Twenty-second Street that the Flatiron begins, 
and the drab hives behind are forgotten as the 
vision of the Square strikes the eye. The Parisian, 
sipping an aperitif at the corner table of the 

-*-85-e- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

Cafe de la Paix, believes himself to be occupying 
the exact centre of the universe. The Manhat- 
tanite knows him to be wrong by a matter of three 
thousand and some odd miles. Be he plutocrat 
or panhandler he knows that it is some spot from 
which he can look up and see the lithe figure of 
Diana, and the illuminated clock in the tower 
of the Metropolitan Building. 

Although not formally opened as Madison 
Square until 1847, the story of the land goes back 
almost two hundred and fifty years. It was in 
1670 that Sir Edward Andros, Governor of the 
Province, granted to Solomon Peters, a free 
negro, thirty acres of land between what is now 
Twenty-first and Twenty-sixth Streets, extend- 
ing east and west from the present Broadway 
(Bloomingdale Road) to Seventh Avenue. Forty- 
six years later the negro's descendants sold the 
tract to John Horn and Cornelius Webber, and 
a hundred years after it became vested in John 
Horn the second. In the middle of the present 
roadway west of the Flatiron Building the Horn 
farmhouse, occupied by John the Second's daugh- 
ter and son-in-law, Christopher Mildenberger, 
stood when the Avenue was cut through to 
Twenty-third Street in 1837. It was allowed to 
remain there two years more, when it was re- 
moved to the famous site at the northwest corner 
of Twenty- third Street and became the Madison 

-i- 86-J- 




W"! ^a k> ■■ 



*--. 



)/f ' 







'the tower of the metropolitan building, what- 
ever ARTISTS MAY THINK OF IT THE TOWER IS, STRUC- 
TURALLY, ONE OF THE WONDERS OF THE WORLD. 
EXACTLY HALFWAY BETWEEN SIDEWALK AND POINT 
OF SPIRE IS THE GREAT CLOCK WITH THE IMMENSE 

dials" 



FOURTEENTH TO MADISON SQUARE 

Cottage. The old chroniclers tell of the joyous 
spirit and flavour of that roadhouse, a favourite 
rendezvous of horsemen in the forties, and of the 
genial management of its proprietor, Corporal 
Thompson. In the Collection of Amos F. Eno 
there is a photograph of the business card of the 
Cottage, with the announcement that the stages 
" leave every 4 minutes." A picture shows the 
stages before the building with its slanting roof 
and its three dormer windows facing the Avenue 
and Park. Several miles beyond the city proper, 
it was a post tavern in the coaching days, and the 
huge pair of antlers announced the " Sign of the 
Buck-horn." 

It had its brief and glorious day and then 
passed. Early in 1853 it was torn down to make 
room for a circus, known as Franconi's Hippo- 
drome, built by a syndicate of American show- 
men, among whom were Avery Smith, Richard 
Sands, and Seth B. Howe. The lithograph in 
the Collection of J. Clarence Davies shows a com- 
bination of tent roof and permanent wall. There 
was a turretted sexagonal entrance at the corner 
facing the Avenue and Twenty-third Street, and 
another at the northern end of the building. 
Seven hundred feet in circumference was the Hip- 
podrome, of brick sides, two stories high, with 
an oval ring in the centre two hundred feet wide 
by three hundred feet long, seating six thousand 

-e-87-f- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

people, and having standing room for about half 
as many more. It was a bold venture, perhaps 
too bold for its time. When the novelty had 
worn off the profits began to dwindle and then 
ceased entirely. Amos F. Eno, a New Eng- 
lander who had prospered exceedingly in New 
York, bought the property and planned to erect 
a hotel that was to surpass anything that the city 
had already known. Sceptics ridiculed the idea, 
predicting that a situation so far uptown meant 
certain disaster. But the Hippodrome building 
was torn down, the new structure begun, and in 
September, 1859, the Fifth Avenue Hotel opened 
its doors under the direction of Colonel Paran 
Stevens. It was of white marble, six stories in 
height. Among the innovations and conveniences 
that made it the wonder of its day was the first 
passenger elevator ever installed. New York then 
knew the device as " the vertical railway." 

But between the time when Solomon Peters 
received his grant and the day when the opening 
of the Fifth Avenue Hotel ushered in a new 
era, the land experienced many vicissitudes. In 
the last years of the eighteenth century it was 
a Parade Ground, at one time extending from 
Twenty-third to Thirty-fourth Streets, bounded 
on the east by the Eastern Post-road and on 
the west by the Bloomingdale Road. At the 
southern end a Potter's Field was opened in 1794, 

-J- 88-»- 



FOURTEENTH TO MADISON SQUARE 

and there were buried the victims of the frequent 
yellow-fever epidemics. But in 1797 a new Pot- 
ter's Field was opened in Washington Square. 
According to the plans of the Commissioners' 
Map of 1811, there was to be no Fifth Avenue 
between Twenty-third Street and Thirty-fourth 
Street. The Avenue was to end temporarily at 
the former point, and resume its journey eleven 
blocks farther north. As early as 1785 a powder 
magazine stood within the present domains of the 
Square. A United States Arsenal, erected in 
1808, was near the spot of the Farragut statue. 
In 1823 the Arsenal building became the house 
of refuge of the Society for the Reformation of 
Juvenile Delinquents, the first organization insti- 
tuted in America to care for youthful offenders. 
In 1839 it was destroyed by fire. That was two 
years after the Parade Ground had been reduced 
to its present limits of 6.84 acres and renamed 
in honour of President Madison. In 1844 the 
Eastern Post-road was closed. Its course may 
still be traced by the double row of trees that 
runs northeast towards Madison Square Garden. 
In 1847 the Square was formally opened and 
soon after society began to migrate there. That 
was during the mayoralty of James Harper. 
From 1853 until the end of the Civil War it was 
the social centre of the city. " Among those who 
lived in this vicinity," says " Fifth Avenue," 

-«- 89 -H- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

" were Leonard W. Jerome, and his elder brother, 
Addison G. Jerome, who, with WilHam R. Trav- 
ers, were social leaders and prominent Wall Street 
brokers; James Stokes, who, in 1851, built at No. 
37 Madison Square, East, the first residence on 
Madison Square, and whose wife was a daughter 
of Anson G. Phelps; John David Wolfe, whose 
daughter, Catherine Lorillard Wolfe, gave her 
magnificent art collection to the Metropolitan 
Museum of Art; Frank Work, William and John 
O'Brien, Henry M. Schieffelin, James L. Schief- 
felin, Samuel B. Schieffelin, Benjamin H. Field, 
Peter Ronalds, and William Lane." 

Elsewhere is told of the glories of the Fifth 
Avenue Hotel, of the part it played as one of 
the Hosts of the Avenue, of its share in the great 
days, of its Amen Corner, and of the distinguished 
men like General W. T. Sherman, former Sen- 
ator Piatt, and the actor, William J. Florence, 
who for years made it their home. A quarter of 
a century ago the entrance to the hotel was the 
starting point, every Thanksgiving Day noon, for 
many gaily decorated coaches bound for the old 
Manhattan Field. In earher days the destination 
had been Berkeley Oval at Wilhamsbridge, or the 
old Polo Grounds at One Hundred and Tenth 
Street and Fifth and Sixth Avenues. Draped 
down to the wheels with bunting of dark blue or 
of orange and black the tally-hos drew up before 



FOURTEENTH TO MADISON SQUARE 

the portico and were soon topped with eager, 
ardent youth. As they were whirled away up 
the Avenue there broke out upon the autumn air 
the sharp " Brek-a Coex-Coex-Coex " of Yale, 
or the sky-rocket of Princeton. The return was 
marked by high elation or deep depression accord- 
ing as the Fates had decided on the chalk-lined 
turf. For the collection of sundry wagers the 
victors hurried into the near-by Hoffman House, 
where the presiding genius and stakeholder, Billy 
Edwards, divided attention with the paintings of 
fauns and nymphs that adorned the walls. That 
youth of yesteryear has come to grizzled hair. 
There are crow's feet about the eyes, and the 
world is one of vastly changed values, and the 
game at which the heart is throbbing is a more 
poignant one than that which involved touch- 
downs and goals from the field and desperate 
stands on the two-yard line. But it is the same 
old-time spirit, that then expressed itself in the 
call, " Hold them, Yale," or " Hold them for Old 
Nassau!" that, passed on to succeeding genera- 
tions, is grimly awaiting the shock on the plains 
of Picardy. 

Of all the monuments that have graced Madison 
Square that which first comes to mind is one that 
has gone. Twenty years ago a splendid white 
arch spanned the Avenue, with one pier close to 
the sidewalk in front of the Fifth Avenue Hotel, 



FIFTH AVENUE 

and the other touching the edge of the opposite 
Park. It was in direct hne with Washington 
Arch seventeen hlocks away. Under it, on 
September 30, 1898, passed the victor of Manila 
Bay, whose name it bore, bowing right and left 
to the city's riotous welcome. For months it 
remained there, and then disappeared. Why was 
the beautiful structure not made permanent? The 
Worth Monument, in the centre of the triangular 
piece of ground bounded by Fifth Avenue, Broad- 
way, Twenty-fourth and Twenty-fifth Streets, 
dates from 1857. By order of the Common 
Council the plot was set apart for the erection 
of the shaft in December, 1854. Major-General 
William J. Worth, of Mexican War fame, died 
at San Antonio, Texas, June 7, 1849. The monu- 
ment was dedicated with a parade and a review 
November 25, 1857, and the General's remains 
interred under the south side. In bands around 
the obelisk are recorded the names of the battles 
in which Worth took part. On the east face, cut 
in the stone, may be read "^ Ducit Amor Patriae/' 
and on the west face, " By the Corporation of 
the City of New York, 1857— Honor the Brave." 
At the moment of writing the building beyond 
the Worth Monument, at the corner of Fifth 
Avenue and Twenty-fifth Street, is in the process 
of demolition. At one time the New York Club 
was housed there, and there, for years, the sign 

-i-92-h 



FOURTEENTH TO MADISON SQUARE 

of the Berlitz School for Languages stretched 
across the southern face of the structure. 

" Were all the statues in New York made by 
St. Gaudens ? " was the recent naive and ingenu- 
ous question of a visitor from the West who had 
just completed the first two days of his stay. 
" Most of the good ones were," was the laughing 
rejoinder of an artist. " At least that is the way 
it seems. And nearly all the pedestals for them 
were made by Stanford White." In query and 
response there is a certain amount of justice. It 
is Augustus St. Gaudens's benevolent present- 
ment of Peter Cooper that stands within the little 
park enclosed by Cooper Square. The name of 
St. Gaudens is associated with those of John 
La Farge, White, MacMonnies, MacNeil, and 
Calder in the making of the Washington Arch. 
To St. Gaudens belongs the equestrian statue of 
Wilham Tecumseh Sherman in the Plaza. And 
here, in Madison Square, the Farragut statue is 
his. Unveiled in 1881, executed in Paris when 
the sculptor was thirty years of age, and exhibited 
in the Paris Salon of 1880, the Farragut is, in the 
opinion of Miss Henderson, the base upon which 
St. Gaudens's great reputation rests. " And 
while," she writes, " in New York its merits are 
often balanced with those of the Sherman eques- 
trian group, at the entrance to Central Park; the 
Peter Cooper, in Cooper Square; and the relief 

r«-93H- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

of Dr. Bellows, in the All-Souls' Church — all 
later works — it has never had to yield precedence 
to any, but holds its own by force of its splendid 
vigour and youthful plasticity. It has the essen- 
tial characteristics of the portrait, but so combined 
with the attitude of the artist that the figure 
stands as much more than a portrait, having in 
it something more living, more typical, deeper 
than the mere outward mould of the man. St. 
Gaudens's Farragut has the bearing of a seaman, 
balanced on his two legs, in a posture easy, yet 
strong. He is rough and bluff with the courage 
and simplicity of a commander; his eye is accus- 
tomed to deal with horizons, while the features are 
clean-cut and masterful. The inscription is 
happy : ' That the memory of a daring and 
sagacious commander and gentle great-souled 
man, whose life from childhood was given to his 
country, but who served her supremely in the 
war for the Union, 1861-1865, may be preserved 
and honored, and that they who come after 
him and who will love him so much may see 
him as he was seen by friend and foe, his 
countrymen have set up this monument A.D. 
MDCCCLXXXI.' " 

There are other statues in the Square besides 
the noble one commemorating the deeds of the 
hero of " Full steam ahead, and damn the tor- 
pedoes ! " At the southwest corner there is a 

-e-94-J- 



FOURTEENTH TO MADISON SQUARE 

bronze one of William H. Seward, Lincoln's 
Secretary of State, the work of Randolph Rogers. 
The effigy of Roscoe Conkling, by J. Q. A. Ward, 
is at the southeast corner. Cold and proud is the 
stone as the man was cold, and proud, and biting. 
What chance had haranguing abuse against his 
icy : " I have no time to bandy epithets with the 
gentleman from Georgia"? Then there is the 
drinking fountain by Emma Stebbins, given to 
the city by the late Catherine Lorillard Wolfe, 
and the Bissell statue of Chester A. Arthur. 

No other structure in the city is so many dif- 
ferent things to so many different people as the 
Madison Square Garden. To the old-time New 
Yorker, who likes to babble reminiscently of the 
past, the site recalls the railway terminus of the 
sixties, when the outgoing trains were drawn by 
horses through the tunnel as far north as the 
present Grand Central. To one artistically in- 
clined the creamy tower, modelled on that of the 
Giralda in Seville, suggests the collaboration of 
St. Gaudens and White, and the surmounting 
Diana the early work of the former inspired by 
Houdon's Diana of the Louvre. To the more 
frivolous, the sportingly inclined, the seekers after 
gross pleasures, the Garden has meant the Arion 
Ball, or the French Students Ball, the Horse 
Show, Dog Show, Cat Show, Poultry Show, 
Automobile Show, Sportsman's Show, the Cake- 

-e-95-J- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

Walk, the Six-Day Bicycle Race, or events of 
the prize-ring from the days of Sullivan and 
Mitchell to those of Willard and Moran; Buffalo 
Bill and his Wild West Show, or the circus, the 
Greatest Show on Earth, with its houris of the 
trapeze and the saddle, and its animals, almost as 
fearful and wonderful as the menagerie of ad- 
jectives that its press-agent, the renowned, or 
notorious, Tody Hamilton, gathers annually out 
of the jungles of the dictionary. Also the interior 
of the vast structure echoes in memory with po- 
litical oratory, now thunderous and now per- 
suasive. Through the words directed immediately 
at the thousands that fought their way within the 
walls Presidents and candidates for president have 
sent ringing utterance throughout the land. 

Opposite the Garden, at the southeast corner 
of Twenty-sixth Street, is the Manhattan Club, 
in a house that was formerly the home of the 
University Club, and adjoining it to the south, 
is the Appellate Court House, architecturally one 
of the city's most distinguished buildings. De- 
signed by James Brown Lord, it was completed 
in 1900, at a cost of three-quarters of a million 
dollars. Among the men whose work is repre- 
sented in this home of the Appellate Division of 
the Supreme Court for the City and County of 
New York are Maitland Armstrong, Karl Bitter, 
Charles Henry Niehaus, Charles Albert Lopez, 

-i-96-h 



FOURTEENTH TO MADISON SQUARE 

Thomas Shields Clarke, George Edwin Bissell, 
Philip Martiny, Robert Reid, Willard L. Metcalf, 
Henry Augustus Lukeman, John Donoghue, 
Henry Kirke Bush Brown, Edward Clark Potter, 
Henry Siddons Mowbray, Frederick W. Ruck- 
stuhl, Herbert Adams, George Willoughby May- 
nard, Joseph Lauber, Maximilian M. Schwartz- 
ott, and Kenyon Cox. 

The old home of the Madison Square Presby- 
terian Church was in the block between Twenty- 
third and Twenty-fourth Streets. Then, on the 
northeast corner of the latter street stood one of 
the last surviving residences recalling the days 
when the Square was the possession of Flora 
McFlimsey and her kind, the old brown-stone 
dwelling of Catherine Lorillard Wolfe. The 
Wolfe property, offered for sale, was purchased 
by an official of the Metropolitan Company, and 
an exchange was effected by which the church 
rehnquished its old site and moved to the northern 
corner. The present church was designed by 
Stanford White, who met his death in 1906, the 
year before the formal dedication. With its grey 
brick exterior, showing repeatedly the Maltese 
Cross, its interior following the spirit of the 
Mosque of Santa Sophia in Constantinople, and 
its mural paintings and windows, many of them 
the work of Louis C. Tiffany, it is one of the 
most beautiful of all the city's edifices for reli- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

gious worship. But to the casual eye it is quite 
lost on account of its proximity to its gigantic 
neighbour. 

The traveller approaching Paris can see from 
miles away, the apex of the Eiffel Tower out- 
lined against the sky. The eye of one nearing 
New York, whether his point of observation be 
the deck of an incoming steamer, or a car-chair 
in a train arriving from the West, is met first 
by the cluster of skyscrapers at the southern end 
of the island, and then by a shaft vastly more 
conspicuous by reason of its isolation, the tower of 
the Metropolitan Building. Whatever artists may 
think of it — and there is division of opinion — that 
tower is, structurally, one of the wonders of the 
world. Rising seven hundred feet above the side- 
walk, topping the Singer Building by ninety feet 
and being outclimbed only by the Woolworth 
Building (seven hundred and ninety-two feet), 
the tower is seventy-five feet by eighty-five at its 
base, and carries the building to its fifty-second 
story. Exactly half-way between sidewalk and 
point of spire is the great clock with the immense 
dials of reinforced concrete faced with mosaic tile, 
each twenty-six and a half feet in diameter, with 
the hour hand thirteen and a half feet long, weigh- 
ing seven hundred and fifty pounds, and the minute 
hand seventeen feet long and weighing one thou- 
sand pounds. At night the indicating flashes, the 

ri~ 98 -i- 



FOURTEENTH TO MADISON SQUARE 

hours in white, the quarters in one, two, three, or 
four, red, may be seen at a distance of twenty 
miles. 

But nearer at hand, as the hours creep one by 
one towards the dawn, are the derehcts of the 
Square, dozing fitfully on the park benches. In 
waking moments their dull eyes watch the il- 
luminated face, and the hands pushing forward to 
another day. The spectacle moved one of them. 
Prince Michael, heir to the throne of the Elec- 
torate of Valleluna, in O. Henry's " The Caliph, 
Cupid, and the Clock," to pessimistic utterance. 
" Clocks," he said, " are shackles on the feet of 
mankind. I have observed you looking per- 
sistently at that clock. Its face is that of a tyrant, 
its numbers are false as those on a lottery ticket; 
its hands are those of a bunco-steerer, who makes 
an appointment with you to your ruin. Let me 
entreat you to throw off its humiliating bonds and 
to cease to order your affairs by that insensate 
monitor of brass and steel." 

Sang Sara Teasdale: 

" We walked together in the dusk 

To watch the tower grow dimly white, 
And saw it lift against the sky, 
Its flower of amber light." 



99 



CHAPTER VI 

Some Great Days on the Avenue 

Some Great Days on the Avenue — Pictures and Pageants — 
When a Prince Came Visiting — A Regiment Departs — 
Honour to the Captains — Funeral Processions — Receptions — 
Dinners — The Orient and the Avenue — When Admiral Dewey 
Came Home — Greeting a Marshal of France — The Roar of 
the City and the Guns of the Marne. 

In the stirring times in which we are living, it 
seems as if every day is a gi'eat day on the 
Avenue. Take a single example: The morning 
broke dark and threatening. Heavy clouds pre- 
saged showers. But after an hour or two they 
passed from the heavens, and warmth and golden 
sunshine came. In the course of various activities 
the writer made his way to points between the 
Battery and Fifty-ninth Street, and the means 
of travel employed included three journeys on top 
of Fifth Avenue buses. If one of the early set- 
tlers could only have seen the proud and amazing 
thoroughfare ! 

The air vibrant with excitement. Flags every- 
where. Tens of thousands of the Stars and 
Stripes. Thousands of Union Jacks and Tri- 
colours of France. Hundreds of pavilions of 

-e-lOO-i- 



SOME GREAT DAYS ON THE AVENUE 

Italy and Belgium. Every few yards gaily 
decorated booths from which smiling women or 
lusty-lunged men harangued the passers-by to 
" come across or the Kaiser will." 

On a platform erected on the steps in front of 
the Public Library a slight figure in kilts address- 
ing a swaying, surging crowd. As the bus, held 
up for a minute by the cross-town traffic, stopped, 
we could hear the pleasing burr of Harry Lauder. 
Two hours later; a mile and a half farther down- 
town. The sound of a band in the distance. The 
horses of the mounted policemen forcing back the 
curious thousands to the curb. A regiment of 
regulars, two regiments of militia, and then, 
swinging along lightly in loose step, a handful 
of men in soiled blue. Chasseurs a pied of France, 
who, at Verdun, in the Vosges Mountains, and 
on the Picardy front, had lived splendidly up to 
the traditions of the men with the hairy knap- 
sacks and the hearts of steel whose tramp had 
shaken the continent of Europe one hundred years 
before. 

It was just a day similar to other days that 
had gone before and to days that were to follow. 
To feel the thrill of what were held to have been 
the great days of the past we must put ourselves 
in the mood of old New York, or at the very 
least think of the world as it was wagging along 
a brief four years ago. 

-<- 101 -J- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

" The national banquet-hall where heroes and 
statesmen have been feted, or the parade-ground 
toward which a nation has turned to witness great 
demonstrations in celebration of national events of 
a civic or military or mournful nature. Along it 
have gone to the music of dirges and the sound of 
mournful drums the funeral corteges of many of 
the country's leading statesmen and greatest men, 
and here, too, have occurred riots and disastrous 
fires which have startled the city and shocked the 
nation." So runs the introduction to a little pam- 
phlet issued some years ago by the Fifth Avenue 
Bank. One of the earhest and most notable 
visits, the brochure goes on to tell us, was that 
of the then Prince of Wales, later Edward VII., 
in the autumn of 1860. He was then nineteen 
years old. The city turned out to greet him. 
On Thursday, October 11th, the revenue cutter, 
" Harriet Lane," brought the Prince to New York 
from South Amboy. Then, a day of blaring 
bands, of blended flags, of great transparencies, 
that eventually led to the Fifth Avenue Hotel. 
He was still very young, still very much of a 
boy, very much bored with all the tumult and 
ceremony. Once out of sight of the crowd he 
threw dignity to the winds and played leap-frog 
in the corridor with his retinue. But once again, 
from his bed, to which he had gone with a bad 
headache, he was called at midnight to acknowl- 

-*-102-i- 



SOME GREAT DAYS ON THE AVENUE 

edge the salutes of the Caledonia Club. That 
organization, made up mostly of members of the 
Scotch Regiment commanded by Colonel McLeay, 
headed by Dodsworth's Band, marched up Broad- 
way to the hotel. In the Prince's honour a 
serenade was given, the band blared out with 
" God Save the Queen! ", " Hail Columbia! " and 
other national airs, and once more the sleepy and 
sorely tried royal visitor was obliged to appear to 
bow his thanks. 

The next day, Friday, was given over to visit- 
ing such public buildings as the Astor Library, 
Cooper Union, the Free Academy, and in riding 
through Central Park. 

A ball, famous in city annals, was given at the 
Academy of Music. Among those who attended 
that ball and left a record of it was the late Ward 
McAllister. " Our best people, the smart set, 
the slow set, all sets, took a hand in it, and the 
endeavor was to make it so brilHant and beau- 
tiful that it would always be remembered 
by those present as one of the events of their 
lives." 

The ball was opened by a quadrille d'honneur. 
Governor and Mrs. Morgan, the historian Ban- 
croft and Mrs. Bancroft, Colonel and Mrs. Abra- 
ham Van Buren, with others were to dance in it. 
The rush was so great that the floor gave way, 
and in tumbled the whole centre of the stage. 

-?-103-i- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

Carpenters set feverishly to work to floor over 
the chasm. 

" I well remember," said McAllister, " the 
enormous form of old Isaac Brown, sexton of 
Grace Church, rushing around and encouraging 
the workmen." 

In the course of the evening the Prince danced 
with Miss Fish, Miss Mason, Miss Fannie Butler, 
and others, and was conceded to have danced well. 
The supper was served at a horseshoe table. At 
one end of the room was a raised dais, where the 
royal party supped. At each stage door a prom- 
inent citizen stood guard; the moment the supper 
room was full, no one else was admitted. " I 
remember," confesses Mr. McAlhster, " on my 
attempting to get in through one of these doors, 
stealthily, the vigilant eye of John Jacob Astor 
met mine. He bid me wait my turn." 

Despite the assiduity with which McAllister 
danced after the figure of the Prince, he was not 
among those presented. That honour he sought 
the next day, on the trip to West Point: 

" As General Scott was presenting Colonel 
Delafield's guests to the Prince I approached the 
General, asking him to present me to his Royal 
Highness. A giant, as he was in height, he bent 
down his head to me, and asked sharply, ' What 
name, sir? ' I gave him my name, but at the 
sound of ' Mc,' not thinking it distinguished 

-e-104-i- 



SOME GREAT DAYS ON THE AVENUE 

enough, he quietly said, ' Pass on, sir,' and I 
subsequently was presented by the Duke of New- 
castle." 

Forty-three years after that clamorous greeting 
of New York to the young Prince of Wales the 
present writer was to witness in Paris the visit 
of Edward VII. for the purpose of cementing 
the Entente Cordiale. The tired face told the 
story of the hardest-worked pubhc servant in the 
world. In 1860, on Fifth Avenue, he had already 
begun to pay the price of the royal privilege of 
his exalted birth to bear the arduous burden of 
royal responsibility. 

There are extant many old wood-cuts showing 
the Prince at the Academy of Music ball. But 
the following morning, that brought repose to so 
many, brought none to him. There were visits to 
be paid to Brady's photographic studios at the 
corner of Tenth Street and Broadway, to Bar- 
num's Museum, to General Scott at his Twelfth 
Street residence, and the Broadway store of Ball, 
Black & Company. 

That night a great torchlight parade in honour 
of the Prince was given by the New York fire- 
men. The Prince, with his suite and a number 
of city officials, stood on the hotel balcony, while 
five thousand men in uniform, with apparatus and 
many bands, marched by. Fireworks were set 
off, the brilliant beams of the calcium light — then 

ri- 105 H- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

a novelty — were thrown upon the standing, boyish 
figure of the Prince, thousands of flaring torches 
danced and waved against the darkness of the 
opposite square. 

The next day, Sunday, October 14th, brought 
some rest. In the morning there were services 
at Trinity, where Dr. Vinton preached; then a 
quiet afternoon at the hotel. With Monday came 
the Prince's departure. At half-past nine he left 
the Fifth Avenue Hotel, and in company with 
the Duke of Newcastle, the Earl of St. Albans, 
and Mayor Wood, was driven down to the har- 
bour where the " Harriet Lane " was waiting to 
take him to West Point and Albany. 

The next reception that the chronicler of Fifth 
Avenue events has seen fit to record was that 
given to General Grant after the close of the 
Civil War. At the Fifth Avenue Hotel a num- 
ber of the city's leading business men met and 
planned the pubhc greeting, and one hundred and 
fifty men subscribed one hundred dollars apiece. 
The reception to the returning soldier, which took 
place at the Fifth Avenue Hotel November 20, 
1865, was hardly one of which the city or the street 
had reason to be proud. 

Loose management led to disorder and dissatis- 
faction. Twenty-five hundred jostling, pushing 
persons crowded the halls, corridors, and recep- 
tion rooms. The General stood in one of the 

-J-106-H 



SOME GREAT DAYS ON THE AVENUE 

hotel parlours surrounded by the committee, with 
Mrs. Grant and other ladies to his right, and on 
his left Generals Wool, Cook, and Hooker, John 
Van Buren, Ethan Allen, and others. 

Little judgment seems to have been used in 
issuing the invitations. The throng was indis- 
criminate. Farce comedy was in the air. Re- 
ligious fanatics, passing before the hero, offered 
up prayers for the salvation of his soul. Pre- 
cocious children were thrust forward to his atten- 
tion. Preposterous questions were propounded 
by preposterous people. To add to the confusion 
the names of those persons who fought their way 
through the throng to be presented to the Gen- 
eral were announced to him by a little man who 
got most of them wrong. 

In a postscript to his " American Notes," 
written many years later, Charles Dickens told of 
the vast changes he found on the occasion of his 
second visit to the United States — " changes 
moral, changes physical, changes in the amount 
of land subdued and peopled, changes in the rise 
of vast new cities, changes in the growth of older 
cities almost out of recognition, changes in the 
graces and amenities of life." Making all allow- 
ances for that greater charity, tolerance, and 
kindliness of judgment which comes with the 
riper years — nobody ever could have remained as 
Britishly bumptious, or as bumptiously British 



FIFTH AVENUE 

as Dickens was in his younger days when he first 
came to pay us a visit — taking also into consid- 
eration the fact that a certain explanatory soften- 
ing of earlier criticisms was pohtic, that the 
novelist found a city far more to his taste in 1868 
than he had found in 1842 is not for a moment 
to be questioned. Also, at the time he came to 
New York from Boston, he was naturally in a 
rather placid and contented mood. For in letters 
home, even while complaining of the trying 
changes of the wintry climate, he had told how 
he was making a clear profit of thirteen hundred 
English pounds a week, even allowing seven dol- 
lars to the pound. When he returned to New 
York in April, after an extended tour through- 
out the country, he had still better cause to be 
pleased with the young Republic. Says Forster 
in his "Life": 

" In New York, where there were five farewell 
nights, $3,298 were the receipts of the last, on 
the 20th. of April; those of the last at Boston, 
on the eighth, having been $3,456. But, on earlier 
nights in the same cities respectively, these sums 
also had been reached; and indeed, making allow- 
ance for an exceptional night here and there, the 
receipts varied so wonderfully little, that a mention 
of the highest average returns from other places 
will give no exaggerated impression of the ordi- 
nary receipts throughout. Excluding fractions 
of dollars, the lowest were New Bedford ($1,640), 
Rochester ($1,906), Springfield ($1,970), and 



SOME GREAT DAYS ON THE AVENUE 

Providence ($2,140). Albany and Worcester 
averaged something less than $2,400; while Hart- 
ford, Buffalo, Baltimore, Syracuse, New Haven, 
and Portland rose to $2,600. Washington's last 
night was $2,610, no night there having less than 
$2,500. Philadelphia exceeded Washington by 
$300, and Brooklyn went ahead of Philadelphia 
by $200. The amount taken at the four Brooklyn 
readings was $11,128." 

And only a few years ago there were Amer- 
icans deploring loudly the shabby financial treat- 
ment we gave Dickens, and figuratively and lit- 
erally passing round the hat! 

Fifth Avenue's greeting to Charles Dickens, on 
the occasion of his second visit, was in the form 
of the dinner that was tendered to him at Del- 
monico's, on the evening of April 18, 1868. The 
hosts were two hundred men of the New York 
press. Covers were laid for a hundred and eighty- 
seven guests. 

Five o'clock was the time appointed — we were a 
rugged, early-dining race in those days — but the 
guest had a slight stroke of illness and did not 
appear until after six. Then it was a limping 
old man, aged just sixty-six, who, by the aid of a 
cane, climbed laboriously up the great staircase. 
He was led to his seat at the table by Horace 
Greeley, and seated between Mr. Greeley and 
Henry J. Raymond. The editor of the " Tri- 
bune," acting as master of ceremonies, began the 

-J- 109 -J- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

speech-making by referring to his first discovery, 
many years before, of a story by the then un- 
known "Boz." 

In concluding his reply to the toast, Mr. Dick- 
ens promised : " manfully, promptly, and plainly 
in my own person, to bear for the behalf of my 
own countrymen such testimony of the gigantic 
changes in this country as I have hinted at here 
tonight. Also to record that wherever I have 
been, in the smallest place equally with the 
largest, I have been received with unsurpassed 
politeness, delicacy, sweet-temper, and considera- 
tion. . . . This testimony, so long as I live, and 
so long as my descendants have any legal right 
in my books, I shall cause to be republished, as an 
appendix to every copy of those two books of 
mine in which I have referred to America. And 
this I will do and cause to be done, not in mere 
love and thankfulness, but because I regard it 
as an act of plain justice and honour." 

The amende honorable was not less welcome for 
being long due and the distinguished visitor sat 
down to loud applause and the strains of " God 
Save the Queen." Mr. Raymond responded to 
the toast " The New York Press," and was fol- 
lowed by George William Curtis, William Henry 
Hurlbert, Charles Eliot Norton, Joseph R. Haw- 
ley, Murat Halstead, Edwin de Leon, and E. L. 
Youmans. 

re- 110 -i- 



SOME GREAT DAYS ON THE AVENUE 

Three and a half years after the dinner to 
Dickens Fifth Avenue greeted in a similar way a 
distinguished Russian guest. That was the Grand 
Duke Alexis Alexandrovitch, who was entertained 
by the New York Yacht Club at Delmonico's 
December 2, 1871. James Gordon Bennett, the 
younger, was then Commodore of the club, and 
received the Grand Duke in the restaurant's par- 
lours at seven o'clock. The guests included the 
Grand Duke and his suite, the Russian Minister, 
General Gorloff, Admiral Poisset, Admiral 
Rowan, members of the Russian legation, Russian 
officers, and members of the yacht club. Against 
the walls of the banquet hall the Stars and 
Stripes blended with the blue St. Andrew's Cross. 
The guests were in naval uniform. The " Queen's 
Cup," which had been won by the " America " in 
1851, had the place of honour among the club 
trophies. To the toast to the Czar, General Gor- 
loff responded. The club Commodore answered 
to that to President Grant. After the Grand 
Duke had been informed that he had been elected 
to honorary membership, he responded with a 
brief sailor-like speech. 

On December 22, 1877, President Hayes was 
the guest of honour of the New England Society 
at Delmonico's. Among those there besides the 
President were Secretary of State William M. 
Evarts, Presidents Eliot of Harvard and Porter 

-J- 111 -J- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

of Yale, General Horace Porter, ex-Governor 
Morgan, and Governor Horace Fairbanks of Ver- 
mont. Mr. Evarts answered the toast " The Day 
We Celebrate." The presidents of Yale and 
Harvard, speaking in behalf of their institutions, 
indulged in good-natured contrasts and compari- 
sons. In the old days, according to President 
Porter, when they found a man in Boston a little 
too bad to live with, they sent him to Rhode 
Island, and when they found him a little too 
good to live with, they sent him to Connecticut, 
where, among other things, he founded Yale Col- 
lege; while people of average respectability and 
goodness were allowed to remain in Massachu- 
setts Bay, where, looking into each others' faces 
constantly, they contracted a habit of always 
praising each other with special emphasis — a 
habit which they have not altogether outgrown. 

The Union League gave a reception to General 
Grant on October 23, 1880, in the theatre of the 
club-house. Among those present were Joseph 
H. Choate, General Chester A. Arthur, Chauncey 
M. Depew, General Adam Badeau, Colonel Fred 
Grant, Peter Cooper, Henry Ward Beecher, Gen- 
eral Horace Porter, and Rev. Dr. Newman. An- 
other reception to General Grant was given at 
the Hotel Brunswick May 5, 1883, by the Sat- 
urday Night Club. Certain remarks by the 
former President and by Roscoe Conkling on the 

-f-112-j- 




L i; 




t u - :u 



'^ ^i 






'^■^ #r 



fWM* ^. ' If 






^c::'' 




IN THE BRIGHT SUNLIGHT THE AVENUE GLITTERS WITH 
THE PAVILLIONS OF PATRIOTISM. OLD GLORY MAY 
BE COUNTED BY THE TENS OF THOUSANDS ; ENGLAND'S 
UNION JACK, AND THE TRICOLOR OF FRANCE BY THE 
THOUSANDS. TO FORESTALL THE KAISER THE AVENUE 

IS "coming across" 



SOME GREAT DAYS ON THE AVENUE 

subject of Mexico were considered of much sig- 
nificance at the time. Both spoke strongly in 
favour of the formation of a Mexican-American 
alliance. Mr. Conkling suggested General Grant 
as the logical leader of a great movement to aid 
the sister republic in developing its resources. 

Nearly two thousand guests were present at 
the reception given by the Union League Club 
to President Arthur on January 23, 1884. With 
the Chief Executive, who arrived about nine 
o'clock, were Secretaries Teller and Folger, of 
his Cabinet. After shaking hands with the re- 
ception committee the President was escorted up- 
stairs by William M. Evarts. About the Presi- 
dent were the Cabinet officers, Mr. and Mrs. 
Evarts, Jesse Seligman, and Salem H. Wales, 
and Attorney General and Mrs. Brewster. In 
the distinguished gathering were Mayor Edson, 
Dr. Lyman Abbott, General and Mrs. George B. 
McClellan, Whitelaw Reid, Henry Ward Beecher, 
Parke Godwin, Elihu Root, Cyrus W. Field, Mr. 
and Mrs. John Bigelow, and Lionel Sackville- 
West, the British Minister. 

At the supper, which was served at midnight, 
one of the features was the striking pieces of 
confectionery. In gleaming white sugar was a 
model of the Capitol, and a tall monument sup- 
ported statuettes of the President and his Cab- 
inet. Also there was a twenty-four-foot model 



FIFTH AVENUE 

of the Brooklyn Bridge with the President and 
troops crossing it. 

At the banquet to Lieutenant Greely of Arctic 
fame, at the Lotos Club, on January 16, 1886, 
Vice-President General Horace Porter was in the 
chair, in the absence of President Whitelaw Reid. 
Besides Lieutenant Greely, Chief Engineer 
Melville, and Commander Schley, who headed 
the expedition to relieve Greely, were guests of 
the club, and among others at the table were 
Chief Justice Daly, Colonel C. McK. Leoser, 
Robert Kirby, Patrick Sarsfield Gilmore, Dr. 
Pardee, Frank Robinson, Herman Oelrichs, C. H. 
Webb, Colonel Thomas W. Ejiot, George Masset, 
J. O'Sullivan, Douglas Taylor, James Bates, and 
Chandos Fulton. In his speech the guest of the 
evening told the story of his expedition to the 
Far North and explained the reason for every 
action. Arctic exploration, he declared, could not 
be futile when eleven nations were offering the 
lives of their men in the cause of science. He 
told the story of the splendid spirit of his own 
men during the dreary months at Cape Sabine 
and lauded American courage and achievement in 
all the corners of the earth. There were speeches 
by Judge Daly and Commander Schley, and then 
two fun-makers were introduced in the persons of 
Thorne and Billington, Poo-bah and Ko-Ko, 
from the Gilbert and Sulhvan opera, " The 

-J- 114 -e- 



SOME GREAT DAYS ON THE AVENUE 

Mikado," that was then playing in New 
York. 

Late in November of the same year the Lotos 
Club honoured another explorer, Henry M. Stan- 
ley, who had just returned to New York after 
many years' absence, completing Livingstone's 
work in Central Africa. Stanley sat between 
Mr. Reid, the Club's president, and Chauncey 
M. Depew. Others at the guest's table were 
Lieutenant Greely, General Porter, General 
Winslow, Colonel Knox, Major Pond, General 
Townsend, Lieutenant Hickey, Commissioner An- 
drews, G. F. Rowe, Bruce Crane, Henry Gillig, 
and Daniel E. Bandmann. The speakers, besides 
Mr. Stanley, were Lieutenant Greely, Mr. Depew, 
and Horace Porter. 

At Delmonico's, December 20, 1889, a dinner 
was given by the Spanish- American Commercial 
Union to the visiting delegates to the Pan- 
American Congress. William M. Ivins, as the 
principal speaker, touched upon South American 
relations and international arbitraticjn as a pre- 
vention of war. Among those present were Mayor 
Hugh J. Grant, Elihu Root, Andrew Carnegie, 
Chauncey M. Depew, and Horace White. On 
the walls were portraits of Washington and Gen- 
eral Bolivar, and intertwined with the Stars and 
Stripes, the vividly coloured banners of the South 
American nations. At the right of the chairman. 



FIFTH AVENUE 

William H. T. Hughes, sat Sefior F. C. C. 
Zegarra of Peru, and at the left Mayor Grant. 
The address of welcome was delivered first in 
English and then in Spanish by Mr. Hughes, 
who possessed a perfect command of both lan- 
guages. Sefior Zegarra responded. The toast 
" Our Next Neighbour " was answered by Sefior 
Matias Romero of Mexico. Other toasts and 
speakers were: "International American Com- 
merce," Wilham M. Ivins; " International Jus- 
tice," Elihu Root; " Our Homes," Rev. Dr. John 
R. Paxton; " America — All Republican," John B. 
Henderson, and random addresses from the gal- 
lery by Mr. Depew and Judge Jose Alfonso of 
Chile. 

The next Fifth Avenue reception of importance 
was that given by the Union League Club to 
General W. T. Sherman on April 17, 1890. It 
was a belated celebration of the old soldier's seven- 
tieth birthday which had taken place on February 
8. In the centre of the decorations of the usual 
patriotic colours and design was the Daniel Hunt- 
ington portrait of the General in uniform. Regu- 
lars of the 5th U. S. Artillery Hned the stairway 
leading from the lobby to the reception hall. The 
General, reaching the club-house at eight-thirty, 
was met by James Otis, J. Seaver Page, and Gen- 
eral S. Van Vhet, and, between the lines of soldiers 
at present arms, conducted to a place beneath his 

-i- 116 -J- 



SOME GREAT DAYS ON THE AVENUE 

own portrait. There, surrounded by President 
Depew of the Club, Secretary of the Interior 
John W. Noble, and General Van Vliet, he 
greeted the six or seven hundred invited guests. 
The gathering included representatives of the 
army, the navy, the bench, the clergy, as well as 
business, professional, and political life. The 
Vice-President of the United States, Levi P. Mor- 
ton, was there, and Secretary Noble, Senators 
W. M. Evarts and Nelson W. Aldrich, Generals 
Schofield, Howard, Porter, and Breckenridge, and 
foreign diplomats from Russia, Chile, Brazil, and 
Peru. Of the march to the sea Chauncey M. 
Depew said: *' It was a feat which captured the 
imagination of the country and of the world, 
because it was both the poetry of war and the 
supreme fact of the triumph over the rebellion." 
Another great day on the Avenue was August 
28, 1896, which witnessed the arrival of the famous 
Chinese statesman, Li Hung Chang. He came 
as a special envoy of the Chinese Emperor and 
stayed at the Waldorf, then a comparatively new 
hotel. President Cleveland sent General Thomas 
H. Ruger to welcome the visitor. In his cabin 
on the " St. Louis " in the Bay Li Hung Chang 
received the welcoming delegation. The author 
of " Fifth Avenue Events " thus describes the 
great Chinaman on that occasion: "His appear- 
ance was most striking. Over six feet tall, with 

-i-117-i- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

a slight stoop, he wore the bright yellow jacket 
denoting his high rank, a viceroy's cap with a four- 
eyed peacock feather attached to it by amber 
fastenings, and a beautifully coloured skirt of rich 
material. His finger-nails were polished till they 
shone, a huge diamond flashed on his right hand, 
and he peered out benignantly over the tops of a 
pair of gold-bowed spectacles. Dignified in bear- 
ing, he looked every inch the statesman and 
scholar. His gracious manner won him friends 
during his stay in New York, and his indefatigable 
propensity for asking questions — some of them 
rather embarrassing to those questioned, as when 
he politely inquired the ages of the ladies whom 
he met and the salaries of the officials who enter- 
tained him — aroused much merriment." 

In the way of a distinguished visitor Li Hung 
Chang was a novelty. New York gave him a 
rousing reception. The Avenue was lined by 
cheering throngs as the Ambassador and his suite 
were driven to the hotel. The carriages were 
flanked by U. S. Cavalry. Over the gaily deco- 
rated Waldorf the golden imperial banner of the 
Celestial Kingdom with the great blue Dragon 
snapping at a crimson ball fluttered in the breeze. 
But Li Hung Chang did not pay the hostelry the 
compliment of relying on its cuisine, preferring 
the services of his own Chinese cooks. The day 
after his arrival the Ambassador was received bj^ 



SOME GREAT DAYS ON THE AVENUE 

President Cleveland at the home of ex- Secretary 
of the Navy WiHiam C. Whitney, Fifth Avenue 
and Fifty-seventh Street. Surrounding the Presi- 
dent were the Secretaries of State, War, the 
Treasury, the Attorney-General, and other of- 
ficials. The visiting statesman was presented to 
Mr. Cleveland by Richard Olney, Secretary of 
State, and to the Chief Executive turned over his 
credentials from the Chinese Emperor. 

The banquet that evening, given by former 
American diplomats to the Celestial Empire, 
began at six o'clock, as Li wished to set for the 
Western world the example of early retiring. In 
his attentions to the splendid repast before him 
he was most abstemious, but he finished by smok- 
ing a cigar. John E. Ward, a former Minister 
to China, began the speech-making by a toast to 
the Emperor, the President of the United States, 
and Li Hung Chang. George F. Seward, an- 
other former Minister to China, lauded the Am- 
bassador's long and distinguished services to his 
country and to the world at large. After a brief 
response through his interpreter, Li left the ban- 
quet hall at eight-thirty, and went to his night's 
rest. His hosts, however, were not to be balked 
of their evening's entertainment, and the oratorical 
feast was continued till midnight. 

About General Grant's tomb, when Li visited 
it, a crowd of more than twenty thousand persons 

r«- 119 -J- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

was gathered. From his carriage Li stepped into 
his chair of state, and was borne to the tomb by 
four pohcemen. At the stairway he left the chair 
and made his way slowly and laboriously on foot 
into the vault. To those about him Li said that 
this visit to the hero's tomb was one of the chief 
things he had in mind in planning his journey to 
America, and that he had thought of it continually 
during the trip. General Horace Porter recalled 
that Li's contribution of five hundred dollars, one 
of the first received, was something that had never 
been forgotten by the American people. Other 
events of the Prime Minister's stay in New York 
were his reception of a delegation of American 
missionary societies, his visits to Chinatown, and 
to Brooklyn, and the dinner given to him at Del- 
monico's the evening of September 2nd. 

Earlier events of the Avenue fade into com- 
parative unimportance when we come to Septem- 
ber 30, 1899. For Admiral George Dewey had 
come home, and Fifth Avenue had the chance to 
acclaim the victor of Manila Bay. Down the 
broad street, from Fifty-ninth Street, under the 
Arch at Madison Square, and on to Washington 
Square, the procession in the hero's honour passed. 
This was the order of march: 

Major-General Roe and Staff. 
Sousa's Band. 

Sailors of the Admiral's Flagship, the " Olympia." 

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SOME GREAT DAYS ON THE AVENUE 

Admiral Dewey, seated beside Mayor Van Wyck 
of New York in a carriage, at the head of a 
line of carriages containing Governor Roose- 
velt, Rear Admirals Schley and Sampson, 
General Miles, and others. 

West Point Cadets. 

United States Regulars. 

New York National Guard and Naval Militia. 

National Guard of other States. 

Union and Confederate Veterans. 

Veterans of the Spanish War. 

When the head of the procession reached Thirty- 
fourth Street, the sailors from the Admiral's 
flagship halted and drew up along the side of the 
Avenue. The Admiral left his carriage and en- 
tered the reviewing stand at Madison Square. 
Admiral Sampson was on his right. Admiral 
Schley on his left. Surrounding them were of- 
ficers of both branches of the service. For four 
hours Admiral Dewey stood there, acknowledging 
the salutes and saluting the flag. The following 
day, October 1st, saw the great naval parade 
through the waters of the Hudson River. 

A decade passed, and then came the Hudson- 
Fulton celebration of September 25-October 9, 
1909. Of chief importance to the Avenue was 
the civic procession of September 28th, when the 
floats, depicting a great number of historical 
^events, moved down the Avenue to Washington 
Square. On the east side of the thoroughfare, 

•■i-121-h 



FIFTH AVENUE 

from Fortieth to Forty-second Street, opposite 
the Pubhc Library, there had been erected a 
Court of Honour. Against the stately pillars of 
the Court, the procession moved swiftly by. 
Every nation that went into the " melting pot " 
was represented, with the harped green flag of 
Ireland at the head of the long column. Follow- 
ing the Ancient Order of Hibernians and other 
Irish societies came the Italian organizations, then 
Poles, Enghsh, Dutch, French, Scotch, Bohemian, 
Hungarian, and Syrian. 

It was the nation's history of four hundred 
years that passed in effigy on the floats. Poca- 
hontas agaui interceded with her father Pow- 
hatan for the life of Captain John Smith. Balboa 
caught sight of the waters of the Pacific. The 
tea was dumped into Boston Harbour. The 
Minute Men stood fast on the Common. Mad 
Anthony Wayne stormed Stony Point. Molly 
Stark's husband said, " There are the red-coats. 
We must beat them today, or Molly Stark's a 
widow! " Cornwallis surrendered his sword at 
Yorktown. Somebody in the Mexican War said, 
" Give them a little more grape. General Bragg! " 
and Dewey said: "You may fire when you're 
ready, Gridley ! " 

In some of these events of the later years the 
writer had a personal share. From a seventh- 
story window at Twenty-first Street he looked 

-i-122-J- 



SOME GREAT DAYS ON THE AVENUE 

down on the procession in honour of Admiral 
Dewey. From a vantage point at Thirty-fifth 
Street he witnessed the passing of floats in the 
Hudson-Fulton celebration. But there was one 
day on the Avenue, perhaps the greatest and 
most inspiring of them all, in which he did not 
share. That was the day that saw the visit of 
the Allied Commissions, the day of the coming 
of a Marshal of France. About the time that 
the guns on the warships and land batteries at 
Hampton Roads were thundering out their mes- 
sage of welcome to the distinguished guests, the 
writer in company with six other Americans who 
had been with the Commission for Rehef in Bel- 
gium was entering French territory, after a never- 
to-be-forgotten journey through Germany. How 
such of us who claimed New York as our own 
thrilled as we pictured three thousand miles away 
the city's greeting to the grave, silent man whose 
cool genius had hurled back the Teuton hordes at 
the very gates of Paris! How we built up on 
the limited descriptions that had been cabled across 
the Atlantic! We saw the sweep of the proces- 
sion up the Avenue, the thousands upon thou- 
sands of flags, the densely packed throngs lining 
the sidewalks, the eager faces in the windows of 
the tall buildings, and in the motor-car, for which 
all eyes were searching, the smiling, saluting 
Marshal. 

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FIFTH AVENUE 

" About now," said one of us, " he should be 
passing Madison Square." 

" I can see the people on the sidewalks and 
crowding the windows and the housetops," said 
another. 

" And I," said a third, " can hear the roar 
that goes up from the Avenue when the people 
catch sight of him." 

" When he hears that roar," said a fourth, " he 
will recall the guns of the Marne as gentle 
zephyrs." 

To that last statement and sentiment we all 
proudly agreed. For despite the three thousand 
miles of intervening ocean it was our New York 
and our Fifth Avenue. 



124 



CHAPTER VII 

Some Avenue Clubs in the Early Days 

Some Avenue Clubs in the Early Days — The Invention of 
the Club — Cato or Dr. Johnson? — The Judgment of Thack- 
eray — The Union — The Prolific Diedrich Knickerbocker — 
Omens of 1836 — The Century — Its Descent from the Sketch 
and the Column — Old-Time Austerity — Leaders of the Talk 
— The Lotos — The Union League — The Manhattan — The 
First of the College Clubs— The Columbia Yacht— The New 
York Athletic — Rise and Fall of the Traveller's — The 
Arcadian. 

" Peesuming that my dear Bobby would scarcely 
consider himself to be an accomplished man about 
town until he had obtained an entrance into a 
respectable club, I am happy to inform you that 
you are this day elected a member of the ' Poly- 
anthus,' having been proposed by my friend, Lord 
Viscount Colchicum, and seconded by your af- 
fectionate uncle. I have settled with Mr. Stiff, 
the worthy secretary, the preliminary pecuniary 
arrangements regarding the entrance fee and the 
first annual subscription — the ensuing payments 
I shall leave to my worthy nephew. You were 
elected, sir, with but two black-balls; and every 
other man who was put up for ballot had four, 
with the exception of Tom Harico, who had more 
black balls than white. Do not, however, be 
puffed up by this victory, and fancy yourself 
more popular than other men. Indeed, I don't 
mind telling you (but of course I do not wish it 
to go any farther) that Captain Slyboots and I, 

-J- 125 -h 



FIFTH AVENUE 

having suspicions of the meeting, popped a couple 
of adverse balls into the other candidates' boxes; 
so that, at least, you should, in case of mishap, 
not be unaccompanied in ill-fortune." — Thack- 
eray's " Mr. Brown the Elder takes Mr. Brown 
the Younger to a Club." 

Very likely there are a few thousand New 
Yorkers, who like the present writer, not having 
considered the subject very deeply, have held to 
the vague idea that the club was an invention of 
a certain Dr. Samuel Johnson. Also that it 
came about in some such way as this. The Doctor 
had grown weary of bullying the patient Bos well, 
and browbeating the acquaintance met by chance 
in Fleet Street or the Strand did not entirely 
satisfy him. So one day, storming out of the 
Cheshire Cheese, after roundly abusing the lark- 
pie of which he had consumed an enormous quan- 
tity, he founded the first club, with the object of 
gathering together a number of his fellow-mortals 
in one place, and upon them pouring out the vials 
of his pompous and splenetic wrath. 

One day, however, the " De Senectute " that 
had been long forgotten was recalled by a passage 
in Mr. James W. Alexander's " History of the 
University Club of New York." There it was 
pointed out, that as far back as 200 B.C., Cicero 
represented Cato as saying: " To begin with, I 
have always remained a member of a ' Club.' 

-J-126-H- 



SOME AVENUE CLUBS IN THE EARLY DAYS 

Clubs, as you know, were established in my 
quaestorship on the reception of the Magna Mater 
from Ida. So 7 used to dine at their feast with 
members of my club — on the whole with modera- 
tion." But, except as a point of historical interest, 
whether stern Cato or voluble Johnson was the 
inventor does not matter greatly to the New York 
club member who is airing his weekly grievance 
by drawing up a petition, or writing a scorching 
letter a day to the House Committee. 

If you will listen to the Manhattanite of the 
older generation, you are likely to derive the 
impression that club life in New York is a matter 
of the last half-century at most. He is rather 
inclined to fleer at any pretension to American 
club hfe of earlier date. In one sense he is right. 
The club as we know it now is essentially a 
British institution modelled on British lines. More 
and more is the British idea being carried to the 
extreme, until we are associating club life with 
the vast club-house of spacious lounges and marble 
swimming pools, and a cuisine rivalling that of 
one of the great new hotels. The Fifth Avenue 
club of half a century ago had little magnificence 
as we now understand the word. It was a simpler 
and more limited hospitality that was offered to 
the friend or the distinguished stranger from over- 
seas. Yet that hospitality must have had a rare 
flavour and atmosphere. There must have been 

-i-127-e- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

something about it that went far to make up for 
mere material deficiencies, if we are to credit the 
verdicts of those who were in a position to com- 
pare American club life with club hfe in England 
and on the Continent. Thackeray was as fine a 
judge of the matter as any man who ever strutted 
through St. James's Park and scowled back at 
the Barnes Newcomeses and Captain Heavy- 
sideses in the club windows along Pall Mall, and 
there was what he said and wrote about the 
Century. 

It was in the middle of the sixth decade of 
the last century that the clubs began to find their 
way into Fifth Avenue. One of the first was 
the Union Club. Writing of that organization 
in 1906, M. Charles Huard, in " New York comme 
je I'ai vu," volunteered the puzzling information 
that it was '' fonde en 1836 par les descendants 
de Knickerbocker, le plus vieuoo done des grand 
clubs de New York" If the Frenchman was to 
be taken literally he apparently regarded the off- 
spring of Washington Irving's creation as an ex- 
ceedingly prolific race. The Union, in 1855, 
moved from Broadway near Fourth Street into 
a house on the northwest corner of Fifth Avenue 
and Twenty-first Street. That home, which the 
Union occupied until fifteen or twenty years ago, 
was described as " a superb structure which cost 
three hundred thousand dollars." It was the first 

-?-128-e- 



SOME AVENUE CLUBS IN THE EARLY DAYS 

building erected in the city solely for club pur- 
poses. Almost to the day of its demolition, al- 
though the neighbourhood about it was changing 
rapidly, the old house wore an aspect of dignity. 
To the corner the habitues of other years seldom 
come today. Instead, at the noon hour, the side- 
walks swarm with foreign faces and there is ex- 
cited babble in an alien tongue. The cloak and 
suit firm of Potash and Perlmutter is as much 
at home here now as it was in its East Broadway 
— or was it Division Street? — loft when the pres- 
ent century was coming into being. 

There is an old volume, bearing the date 1871, 
called " The Clubs of ISlew York." The author 
was a Francis Gerry Fairfield, and the chapters 
that make up the book were originally contrib- 
uted to the columns of the " Home Journal." 
There is a perceptible smile on Mr. Fairfield's 
face as he writes of the town of thirty years 
before. To the present generation that smile is 
irresistibly funny. He recalls the year 1836, 
when the Union was founded as one of meteoro- 
logical oddities. " Tradition preserves the record 
of the season under the designation of the cold 
summer. Weird auroras did not forbear to lift 
themselves in mountains of fire along the north, 
even in July; and more than once the canopy- 
aurora hung like a mock sun in the very centre 
of the heavens. People predicted strange things; 

-e-129-J- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

but the strange things did not happen. The 
hyena of pestilence, the wolf of want, and the 
red death of war were conjured, but emerged not, 
nevertheless, from the vasty deep supposed by 
Shakespeare to be inhabited by their spirits." But 
Mr. Fairfield disclaims any suggestion that " the 
gestation of the Union Club, then in progress, 
had any material influence in the evolution of 
these omens, or that the weather was affected by 
the parturition of the great social event." With 
the metropolitan sophistication of 1871 he pats 
1836 on the head as a year when New York was 
a bit of a village, of rather more than three hun- 
dred and fifty thousand inhabitants. Houston, 
then North Street, Bleecker, and Bond Streets 
were particularly uptown, and thoroughfares of 
fashion and aristocracy. The old regime was still 
in its glory; and real counts, in plaid pantaloons, 
were sensational occurrences to be petted, set up 
as lions, and finally entrapped into matrimony, 
just by way of improving the blood of the first 
famihes. He tells of " the little white-faced hotel 
now termed the Tremont " as having been kept 
by a real count, expatriated for political reasons, 
but afterwards restored to titles and estates. 
There are those of the Year of Grace 1918 who 
recall the " little white-faced Tremont." But its 
soul has long since passed to t'other side of Styx. 
From the day when the Union first opened its 
ri- 130 -h 



SOME AVENUE CLUBS IN THE EARLY DAYS 

doors at No. 1 Bond Street, it was one of the 
wealthiest and most exclusive of New York clubs. 
The names of its organizers are names associated 
with the history of the city. Ogden Hoffman, 
whom Mr. Fairfield describes as " a bald-headed, 
dreamy-eyed man, in his day the star of the New 
York Bar, both for fervid eloquence and profound 
learning " ; Phihp Hone, he of the immortal 
"Diary"; Thomas P. Oakley, Samuel Jones, 
Beverly Robinson, W. B. Lewrence, Charles 
King, E. T. Throop, and J. Depeyster Ogden. 
These were some of the men whose names were 
appended to the provisional constitution drawn up 
on June 30, 1836. C. Fenno Hoffman, "next 
to Morris the sweetest song-writer America has 
produced," later became a member of the associa- 
tion, which from its inception, was the representa- 
tive organization of the old families. Livingstons, 
Clasons, Dunhams, Griswolds, Van Cortlandts, 
Paines, Centers, Vandervoorts, Stuyvesants, Van 
Renssalaers, Irelands, Suydams, and other names 
of Knickerbocker fame, filled its list of member- 
ship with a sort of aristocratic monotony of that 
Knickerbockerism, which has since, to use the 
words of Mr. Fairfield again, " in solemn and 
silent Second Avenue (the Faubourg St. Ger- 
main of the city), earned the epithet of the Bour- 
bons of New York." Solemn and silent Second 
Avenue is solemn and silent no more. Long since 



FIFTH AVENUE 

gone are the social glories of that thoroughfare 
that once boldly stepped forward to challenge the 
supremacy of the street that is the subject of this 
book. " Sic transit! " or something of the kind 
would have been the probable comment of Mr. 
Fairfield, for he, in common with others of his 
age, delighted in flinging in a scrap of Latin or 
French on every possible occasion. They were 
industrious investigators of the thesaurus in those 
days. 

The first home of the Union, at ISTo. 1 Bond 
Street, was in reality the house of its secretary, 
John H. L. McCrackan. In 1837 a building on 
Broadway near Leonard Street was secured, and 
the club moved into it, there to remain for three 
years. Then, for seven years, it was in a house 
on the other side of Broadway, and in 1847, obey- 
ing the prevalent impulse up-townward, it shifted 
its quarters to the spot from which it was later 
to remove to the Twenty-first Street home. That 
structure at Broadway and Fourth Street was the 
property of the Stuyvesant family, and after the 
departure of the men of the Union, was occupied 
by the confectioner Maillard as a hotel and res- 
taurant. In 1852 the question of a permanent 
building began to be discussed, and in 1854 the 
land at the Twenty-first Street corner was se- 
cured and the work of erecting the structure that 
in its day was the most imposing of all that lined 

-e- 132 -J- 



SOME AVENUE CLUBS IN THE EARLY DAYS 

Fifth Avenue between Waverly Place and the 
Broadway junction begun. The club moved into 
the new quarters in May, 1855, at a time when 
its membership numbered approximately five hun- 
dred. In writing of the Union as it was in 1871 
Mr. Fairfield made the comment that literature 
was hardly represented at all, and journalism only 
by Manton Marble of the "World." As had 
been the case of Thackeray and the Athenaeum 
of London, Mr. Marble, at the time of his first 
candidacy, had been blackballed. The objection, 
also as in the case of Thackeray, was ascribed not 
to the personality of the man, but to his profes- 
sion. But Mr. Marble was eventually admitted 
through the efforts of a member of the Board of 
Directors, who declared boldly that not a new 
member should be elected until the blackballs 
against the journalist had been withdrawn. Rob- 
ert J. Dillon, landscape gardener, and J. H. 
Lazarus, portrait painter, were almost the sole 
art representatives, and in 1871 J. Lester Wallack 
was the only actor on the club list. Wallack's 
great contemporary of the stage, Edwin Booth, 
was a member of the Century and of the Lotos. 
The law of the day was represented by such men 
as Mayor Hall, until he resigned as a result of 
the criticism of fellow-members growing out of 
the exposures of the Tammany frauds in the 
summer and autumn of 1871, W. M. Evarts, 

-i-133-i- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

Judge Garvin, Judge Gunning S. Bedford, Eli P. 
Norton, and John E. Burrill. Of men prominent 
in political and municipal life were August Bel- 
mont, Samuel J. Tilden, Peter B. Sweeny, former 
Mayor George Opdyke, Isaac Bell, and Andrew 
H. Green, later to become the " Father of Greater 
ISTew York." Among the dominant financial 
figures, in addition to August Belmont, were A. 
T. Stewart, John J. Cisco, Henry Clews, and 
John Jacob Astor. From the Army were U. S. 
Grant, then the nation's President, John H. 
Coster, George W. Cullom, Samuel W. Craw- 
ford, Howard Stockton, Rufus Ingalls, J. L. 
Rathbone, I. U. D. Reeve, and Stewart Van 
Vliet. From the Navy, James B. Breese, James 
Alden, Edward C. Gratton, Thomas M. Potter, 
Henry O. Mayo, James Glynn, W. C. Leroy, 
L. M. Powell, and John H. Wright. 

By virtue of its descent from the Sketch and 
the Column, the Century Association might lay 
claim to seniority among the clubs of Fifth 
Avenue. The Sketch Club was the result of the 
union of the literary and artistic elements of New 
York, which, in 1829, were producing an annual 
called " The Tahsman." Among the writers in 
the Sketch were Bryant, Verplanck, and Sands, 
and later Washington Irving and J. K. Pauld- 
ing joined it. There was no regular home, the 
club meeting at the houses of members in turn. 

4-134.-*- 



SOME AVENUE CLUBS IN THE EARLY DAYS 

For six months, during 1830, it did not 'exist, 
having been dissolved in May of that year, and 
reorganized in December. Thereafter, for a few 
years, it met in the Council Room of the National 
Academy of Design, and then returned to the 
custom of meeting at the homes of the members. 
That organization was the embryo Century. The 
Sketch Club had first taken form in 1829. Four 
years before that a society called the Column 
had been established by graduates of Columbia 
College. That organization, too, had a share in 
the moulding of the new club. 

The meeting that brought the Century into 
being was held the evening of January 13, 1847, 
in the rotunda of the New York Gallery of Fine 
Arts in the City Hall Park. The call for the 
meeting had been sent out a few weeks before, 
the men composing the signing committee being 
John G. Chapman, A. B. Durand, C. C. Ingham, 
A. M. Cozzens, F. W. Edmonds, and H. T. 
Tuckerman. The original Centurions were forty- 
two in number, of whom twenty-five came from 
the Sketch, and six from the Column. There were 
ten artists, ten merchants, four authors, three 
bankers, three physicians, two clergymen, two 
lawyers, one editor, one diplomat, and three men 
of leisure. All were more or less representative 
men of the city, which had grown from the town 
of three hundred and fifty thousand of the day 

-i-135-i- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

of the Union's formation, to a young metropolis of 
six hmidred thousand. Guhan C. Verplanck was 
the club's first president, and back in his day 
began the Century's peculiar Twelfth Night Fes- 
tival, which has been continued ever since. 
Twelfth Night with the Centurions is distinctive 
in that it is not an annual event nor the event of 
any given year. The very uncertainty of the 
ceremonial has added zest to the revel, which 
usually ends with an old-fashioned Virginia Reel. 
A few years ago the reel was led by Theodore 
Roosevelt and the late Joseph H. Choate. 

The first home of the Century, which it oc- 
cupied for two years, was in rooms at 495 Broad- 
way — between Broome and Spring Streets. Dur- 
ing this period a journal called the " Century " 
was started, and edited by F. S. Cozzens and 
John H. Gourley. Then, in 1848, the club moved 
to 435 Broome Street; thence, in 1850, to 575 
Broadway; in 1852, to Clinton Place, where 
Thackeray learned to love it, and where, by virtue 
of proximity, it first laid claim to be regarded as 
a Fifth Avenue club. 

In Clinton Place the Century stayed until it 
went to its Fifteenth Street house, where it was 
so long to remain. Gulian Verplanck's presi- 
dency lasted for many years. At first it was a 
happy tenure of office. But the Civil War came, 
bringing with it grave dissensions. Verplanck 

-J- 136 -J- 



'uJi^^:??r 




WHERE THE AVENUE AND THIRTY-FOURTH STREET CROSS 
STANDS THE BUILDING POPULARLY KNOWN AS THE 
KNICKERBOCKER TRUST COMPANY. HERE, IN THE 
MIDDLE OF THE LAST CENTURY, "sARSAPARILLA" 
TOWNSEND BUILT IN BROWN-ST(JNE, AND A. T. 
STEWART LATER BUILT IN WHITE MARBLE 



SOME AVENUE CLUBS IN THE EARLY DAYS 

may be said to have invited the divisions that 
crept into the club, and which led to his over- 
whelming defeat in the election of 1864. He was 
succeeded by the historian Bancroft, who held 
office until 1868, when he resigned because of his 
departure for Prussia as the United States Min- 
ister to Berlin. 

From the very day when it took form the Cen- 
tury seems to have had an atmosphere — almost a 
history. In the years long before the more modern 
clubs of a literary flavour were dreamed of, the 
Century was bringing together the leading men-of- 
letters and of art of New York. Yet somehow 
the Century of early times impresses newer gen- 
erations as having been tremendously portentous 
and dignified. There was never any suggestion 
of Bohemia. After the establishment of the 
Century the gifted Poe was to enjoy, or rather 
to endure, two more years of life. By no stretch 
of the imagination can we think of his being in the 
club, even as the guest of an evening. There was 
plenty of good-fellowship, no doubt, and good 
cheer, but also the chill of a certain reserve. The 
talk seems, after all the years, to have been essen- 
tially serious — men expressing themselves not 
lightly, but judicially, and after long deliberation; 
Mr. Bryant gravely conceding the right of Pope 
or Dryden or Watts, according to the subject of 
discussion, to be ranked as a poet, or denying 

-i- 137 H- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

the same, while members of lesser note sat about 
listening and nodding, but preserving becoming 
reticence. There was almost a Bostonese austerity 
about the great men of that early time and circle. 
They wore their garments as Roman Senators 
wore their togas. It was not good form for the 
stranger to break lightly into the talk of the Im- 
mortals. To have done so would have been to 
provoke the amazement and censure that was the 
lot of Mark Twain many years after, when, at a 
dinner in the Hub, he sought to jest irreverently 
with the sacred names of Holmes, Emerson, and 
Longfellow. Again try to fancj'^ the shy, eccen- 
tric, improvident genius of " Ulalume," " The 
Bells," and " The Fall of the House of Usher '* 
at ease in a company that, while delightful, was 
all propriety and solid intellectuality. No, Poe 
would no more have fitted into the Century than 
Balzac or Zola would have fitted into the French 
Academy which so persistently denied them. And, 
to be perfectly frank, had the writer been a 
Centurion of that period, and had the name of 
Edgar Allan Poe come up for election, he might 
have been one of the first to drop a black pill in 
the box, loudly acclaiming the genius, but de- 
ploring the impossible and unclubable personality. 
After the presidency of Bancroft came that of 
Bryant. He held the office until his death in 
1878, but as he was always averse to crowds, he 

-j-138-e- 



SOME AVENUE CLUBS IN THE EARLY DAYS 

was seldom seen at the club except in official 
meetings. An enthusiastic Centurion, writing of 
the club at the time of Bryant's death, when it 
had been in existence thirty-one years, spoke of it 
as having drawn together the choicest spirits of 
that generation of New York. " Without formal- 
ity or design, it had become an institute of mutual 
enlightenment among men knowing the worth of 
one another's work, likened by Bellows, more than 
half seriously, to the French Academy. A sure 
result of this communion was absolute equality 
among those who shared it. No true Centurion 
ever assumed anything, each standing in his real 
place. The atmosphere killed pretension and 
stifled shams. The pedant or the conceited person 
silently drifted away. How could it be other- 
wise, while a famous painter was describing some 
scene, or a noted philosopher illustrating some 
theory, or an acute statesman drawing some his- 
torical parallel, than that the egotist should drop 
himself, and the proser forget to prose?" The 
late Clarence King was in his day a leader in 
the Century talk, and his comment on the club 
was that it contained " the rag-tag and bob-tail 
of all that was best in the country." Many times 
has it been introduced under thin disguises in 
the fiction dealing with New York. In some of 
the novels of Robert W. Chambers it appears 
as the Pyramid. Twenty years ago Paul Lei- 

-*-, 139 -h 



FIFTH AVENUE 

cester Ford brought it into " The Story of an 
Untold Love," caHing it The Philomathean. Ac- 
cording to the hero of that tale, the Philomathean 
was the one club where charlatanry and dishon- 
esty must fail, however it succeeded with the 
world, and where the poorest man stood on a par 
with the wealthiest. The Centurion of all times 
has had much to be proud of, and he has not been 
blind to his blessings, nor ashamed to acquaint 
the world with his great good fortune. 

Although most of them began in side streets, 
and many of them have in the later years mi- 
grated again to side streets, through the greater 
part of their history the clubs here discussed be- 
long essentially to the " Avenue " from which 
they have drawn so much of their inspiration. It 
does not matter that the present home of the 
Century is at 7 West Forty-third Street, or that 
the Lotos for the past few years has been at 
110 West Fifty-seventh Street. They remain, 
as they always have been. Fifth Avenue clubs. 
Part of the history of the Lotos Club is written 
in the chapter dealing with " Some Great Days 
on the Avenue." For the fame of the organiza- 
tion as a giver of elaborate banquets to distin- 
guished guests has spread through the land. The 
Lotos dates back to the early spring of 1870, 
when a group of young New York journalists met 
in the office of the New York " Leader " to take 

■f- 140 -<- 



SOME AVENUE CLUBS IN THE EARLY DAYS 

the initiatory steps necessary for the formation 
of a club. These men were De Witt Van Buren 
of the "Leader," Andrew C. Wheeler of the 
" Daily World," George W. Hows of the " Even- 
ing Express," F. A. Schwab of the " Daily 
Times," W. L. Alden of the " Citizen," and J. H. 
Elhot of the " Home Journal." As the founders 
were all connected with the literary, musical, art, 
or dramatic departments of their papers, it was 
not surprising that the projected association was 
to be modelled upon the Savage, Garrick, and 
Junior Garrick of London. Earlier failure had 
shown that a strictly literary organization was out 
of the question. A wider and more comprehensive 
membership was a necessity. As set forth in 
Article I., Section 2 of the Lotos Constitution, 
the primary object of the club was " to promote 
social intercourse among journalists, literary men, 
artists, and members of the theatrical profession." 
From the first temporary quarters in the par- 
lours of the Belvidere House, then at the corner 
of Fourth Avenue and Fourteenth Street, the club 
moved into a permanent home at No. 2 Irving 
Place, a building adjoining the Academy of 
Music. In the autumn of 1870 the first president, 
De Witt Van Buren, died, and was succeeded 
by A. Oakley Hall, then the Mayor of New York, 
who assumed the office entirely in his social 
capacity, as a journalist, dramatist, and patron 

-*- 141 -f- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

of the arts. It was he who suggested the famous 
" Lotos Saturday Nights." There is a flavour of 
high Bohemia in the hst of members of that 
period. Among the artists were Beard, Rein- 
hart, Burhng, Lumley, Chapin, Bispham, and 
Pickett; there were such pianists as Wehh, Mills, 
Hopkins, Colby, and Bassford; singers like Ran- 
dolfi, Laurence, Thomas, MacDonald, Perring, 
Seguin, Matthison, and Davis; and actors like 
Edwin Booth, Lawrence Barrett, Mark Smith, 
John Brougham, and George Clark. 

Some one has said that every generation must 
express itself in a new club. The decade from 
1861-1870 expressed itself in several. To those 
years of New York date the Columbia Yacht 
(1867), the Harvard, first of the college clubs 
(1865), the Manhattan (1865), the New York 
Athletic (1868), and the Union League (1863). 
The last named organization owes its birth to 
the doubts and complications of the darkest hour 
of the War of Secession. Unite to stand behind 
the President with our full strength, was the 
slogan of the men who met in January, 1863, to 
form the plans for the new association. At the 
beginning there was talk of adopting the name 
" Loyal League." The first work of the club was 
the organization of negro troops in New York 
City. Despite the opposition of Governor Sey- 
mour, and the ridicule of the newspapers, who 

-f-142-?- 



SOME AVENUE CLUBS IN THE EARLY DAYS 

held up the idea of the negro as a soldier as a 
huge joke, the Leaguers persisted in their efforts, 
with the result that in December, 1863, the 
Twentieth Regiment of U. S. coloured troops 
was enlisted, and within a few months, two more 
regiments, known as the Twenty-sixth and the 
Thirty-first. 

In those days the club-house faced Union 
Square, at the junction of Seventeenth Street and 
Broadway. Early in 1868 the Union League 
moved to a house at the corner of Madison Avenue 
and Twenty-sixth Street, the building afterwards 
to be occupied in turn by the University Club and 
the Manhattan Club. The structure had been 
erected by Mr. Jerome for the use of the Jockey 
Club, but was leased to the Union League for a 
term of ten years. Among the early honorary 
members of the Union League were Abraham 
Lincoln, General U. S. Grant, General W. T. 
Sherman, Lieutenant-General " Phil " Sheridan, 
Major-Generals Burnside, Wright, and Hancock, 
Admiral David G. Porter, and Rear-Admiral 
Bailey. The active membership of 1870 included 
such names as William Cullen Bryant, William M. 
Evarts, Whitelaw Reid, Parke Godwin, Horace 
Greeley, Chester A. Arthur, Thomas Nast, Jo- 
seph H. Choate, Eastman Johnson, George P. 
Putnam, Daniel P. Appleton, Dr. Samuel Os- 
good, George Griswold, E. D. Stanton. 

-«-143-i- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

To the name of the Union League is inevitably 
linked that of the Manhattan Club, for, the Civil 
War once at an end, the latter became the ex- 
pression of the political aims and aspirations of the 
Democratic Party as the former was of the Re- 
publican. The Manhattan had its origin in the 
turmoil of the election of 1864, and the defeat 
of the Democratic candidate, General McClellan. 
The first movers in its foundation were Douglass 
Taylor, then secretary of the Tammany society. 
Street Commissioner George W. McLean, S. L. 
M. Barlow of the "World," Judge Hilton, the 
Hon. A. Schell, A. L. Robertson, and John T. 
Hoffman, later Governor of New York State 
from 1869 till 1872. The earlier meetings were 
held in the old Delmonico's, at the corner of Four- 
teenth Street and Fifth Avenue, and then the 
Manhattan moved into its first real home at No. 
96 Fifth Avenue, just a block above the famous 
restaurant, where many of the meetings con- 
tinued to be held. John Van Buren was the first 
president, with Augustus Schell first vice-presi- 
dent, A. L. Robertson second vice-president, 
Manton Marble secretary, and W. Butler Dun- 
can treasurer. 

In the winter of 1867-8 the club was en- 
livened by a bout of fisticuffs that was a " cele- 
brated case " of its day. There was then a strict 
club rule forbidding the introduction of a guest. 

-i- 144 -»- 



SOME AVENUE CLUBS IN THE EARLY DAYS 

Manager Bateman, the father of Miss Bateman 
the actress, saw fit to vioLate this law. A member 
of the House Committee, perhaps overzealous 
in the idea of his duties, carried his protest to 
the point of forbidding the servants of the club 
to serve the unwelcome guest. Mr. Bateman's 
resentment of the action took the form of a per- 
sonal assault, which became the sensation of the 
hour and the topic of the newspapers. " Evi- 
dently," remarked the " Herald " (those were the 
days of the elder Bennett, who in his vast experi- 
ence in New York journalism had more than once 
felt the sting of a horse-whip), "to be slapped 
is what some faces are made for! " But the Gov- 
ernors did not see the matter in the light that 
the " Herald " did, and the pugihstically inclined 
manager was summarily expelled, the board re- 
fusing to settle the matter by accepting his resig- 
nation. 

Another Fifth Avenue club that claimed 1865 as 
the year of its origin was the Traveller's. For 
obvious reasons many of the clubs of the seventh 
decade of the last century chose to be near the 
old Delmonico restaurant, and the Traveller's 
was no exception, making its first home on the 
opposite corner. The object of the association 
was to bring together travellers of all nations, 
and to do proper honour to distinguished who 
were visiting the United States. After two years 

-J- 145-1- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

at the Fourteenth Street corner the Traveller's 
moved northward to a new home at No. 222 Fifth 
Avenue, the George W. Burnham residence at 
Eighteenth Street. Mr. Fairfield apparently did 
not regard the club with entire favour, for in his 
book of 1873 he speaks of the club-house as being 
" a leading resort for America-examining Eng- 
lishmen, and the headquarters of an English 
coterie of considerable social importance." " O 
temporal O mores! " he exclaims. There were 
palmy days in the past, when the receptions were 
social reunions of eclat. But " they have made an 
end of all that, having settled into a body as quiet 
as Mr. Mantilini expected to be after taking a 
bath in the Thames." But, granting Mr. Fair- 
field's claim that the literary quahty of the Trav- 
eller's had deteriorated, there still remained the 
list of Honorary Members carrying a certain 
prestige. Professor Louis Agassiz headed the list ; 
and others were Paul Du Chaillu, the African 
explorer whose adventures were for a long time 
regarded as clever romance; the Hon. Anson 
Burlingame, who had been an envoy from the 
Chinese Emperor; Sir Samuel Baker, of London; 
Rev. J. C. Fletcher, Professor Raphael Pumpelly, 
the Right Rev. Bishop Southgate, the Hon. J. 
Ross Browne, and M. Michel Chevaher, of the 
French Senate. 

"Lotos and Arcadian: both stuff for dreams. 
-i-146-e- 



SOME AVENUE CLUBS IN THE EARLY DAYS 

The one excogitated in spring-time, when Nature 
was taking her break-of-day drowse, previous to 
getting up and going about business; the other 
suggestive of Nature indulging in a half-light 
reverie in a sort of crimson and scarlet dressing- 
gown, previous to putting on her night-cap and 
going to bed, after a hard summer's work. The 
one reminding of a land where it is always after- 
noon of a day in the last of June, when one can 
almost hear the music of corn-growing, the mystic 
throes of buds toiling into blossom; the other of 
a land where it is always about eight o'clock in 
the morning with the dew still on the meadow- 
grass, and the world rubbing its eyes and brush- 
ing away cobwebs of dream, before buckling down 
to the struggle. The one somewhat reminiscent 
of Egypt and crocodiles, lisping palms and Arabs, 
of long and lotos-eating days of heff, in which 
even the lazy hours loiter in shady nooks, and 
the wind holds its breath in sympathy with the 
general doziness, and seems to be listening to 
something; the other of vivid Greek life, with its 
shepherds : 

" ' Piping on hollow reeds to their pent sheep. 
Calm be thy Lyra's sleep/ 

of Pindar, of Orphic song, of lost Milesian tales, 
of a hfe growing into sculpture or breaking into 
sinuous hexameter waves. The one mystic, the 
other beautiful, both symbolical." 

-i- 147 -^ 



FIFTH AVENUE 

With this rhapsody Mr. Fairfield introduced 
the Arcadian Club of New York, an organization 
that for a time threatened to rival the Lotos in the 
latter's particular field. Writing men snatched up 
into the clouds in those days for their metaphors, 
and combed Mythology for illustrations with which 
to garnish descriptions of the most commonplace 
events of everyday life. Here is another gem from 
Mr. Fairfield's book, also in his chapter about the 
Arcadian Club. 

" Gentlemen of society, bankers, stylish young 
men with vast ideas of personal importance, ama- 
teurs and patrons! City Hall is the brain of 
New York, of the continent, and it is one of the 
laws of the world that brains will rule. Rebel as 
muscles merely of the body politic, and ye rebel 
against inexorable law: that scribbling literati in 
the fifth story — for newspapers like men have 
their brains in the upper story — is more potent 
than you in settling the artistic position of a 
Lucca or a Rubenstein, a Dickens or a Dore, a 
Tennyson or a Carlyle. Have ye ever read 
a wonderful little ballad by Uhland, entitled ' The 
Minstrel's Curse?' If so, recall it — for it is 
typical, not of that which comes by-and-by, but 
of that which is: the exponent of the beautiful 
having become in his way an autocrat. Unfor- 
tunate it is that journalism is not always repre- 
sentative of the best culture — that managing edi- 



SOME AVENUE CLUBS IN THE EARLY DAYS 

tors will now and then entrust criticism to incom- 
petents, but its popular power is quite the same, 
notwithstanding, and this good the popular news- 
paper has wrought, to wit — that the exponent of 
the arts, media of culture as they are, is no longer 
dependent upon the caprices and whims of iso- 
lated patrons, nor hampered in his freedom of 
expression by canons of theirs." And so on ad 
infinitum. The present writer confesses in all 
humility that he has not the least idea as to what 
the eloquent gentleman meant. But remember 
that it was the age that produced the " St. Elmo " 
of Augusta Evans Wilson. 



149 



CHAPTER VIII 

Literary Landmarks and Figures 

Literary Landmarks and Figures — A Vision of Pall Mall — 
The Paris of the Forties — Mark Twain's Fifth Avenue 
Home — In the Time of Poe — Where Henry James was 
Born — The Old University Building — An Encounter in Wash- 
ington Square — Clinton Place — Memories of the Past — 
Irving, Cooper, Halleck, Drake, Dickens, and Trollope as 
Shades of the Avenue — A Home of Janvier — The " Griffon 
Push "—The Tenth Street Studio Building— The Tile Club— 
The Cary Sisters — Stoddard, Whittier, Aldrich, and Ripley 
— " Peter Parley " — " Fanny Fern " — James Parton — Some 
Figures of the Recent Past, 

If, of a day of the fifties of the last century, I 
had been an arrival in London, my first thought 
would probably have been of a sole at Sweeting's 
or a slice of saddle of mutton at Simpson's in 
the Strand, provided, of course, that the establish- 
ments named then existed, and the dishes in ques- 
tion were as delectable as in later years, when I 
came to know them in the life. The baser appe- 
tite satisfied, the first pilgrimage would have been, 
not to the Tower, or to Lambeth Palace, or the 
British Museum, but to Pall Mall, in the hopes 
of catching a glimpse, in a club window or on the 
pavement, of the " good grey head " of Thack- 
eray. The first impression might have been dis- 

-e- 150-?- 



LITERARY LANDMARKS AND FIGURES 

appointing. There was in the spectacles and high- 
carried chin something pompous and supercihous. 
The great man, had he noticed them at all, would 
probably have been quite contemptuous of my 
admiring glances, his mind occupied with the idea 
of winning a nod from a passing duke; but I 
would have seen the " good grey head," and 
thrilled at the memory of " Vanity Fair " and 
" Henry Esmond." Similarly, in the Paris of 
that time or of a little earlier period, I would 
have considered the day well spent if in the course 
of it I had seen Victor Hugo with his umbrella, 
riding on the Imperiale of an omnibus, or the 
good Dumas exhibiting his woolly pate conspicu- 
ously in a boulevard cafe, or the author of " The 
Mysteries of Paris " and " The Wandering Jew " 
posing at a table in the Restaurant de Paris or 
Bignon's, or the fat figure of M. de Balzac wad- 
dling in the direction of a printing house to toil 
and groan and sweat over the proofs of the latest 
addition to the " Comedie Humaine." We cannot 
behold such giants in our generation, city, and 
street. Yet Fifth Avenue, from the day the first 
houses pushed northward from Washington 
Square, has had its literary landmarks, figures, 
and traditions. 

Ten years ago, had you been passing of a sum- 
mer's day a house at the southeast corner of the 
Avenue and Ninth Street, you might have seen 

H- 151 -h 



FIFTH AVENUE 

emerging from the front door, a figure clad in 
white flannel, and looked upon the countenance of 
the creator of Tom Sawj'^er and Huckleberry 
Finn. It was, and is, a house of red brick, a 
house of three stories and a high basement, built 
by the architect who had designed Grace Church. 
The number is 21. Clemens went to live there 
in the autumn of 1904, remaining for a time at 
the near-by Grosvenor while the new habitation 
was being put in order, and the home furniture 
that had been brought from Hartford was being' 
installed. When No. 21 was ready for occupation,, 
only Clemens and his daughter Jean went to live 
there, for Clara had not recovered from the strain 
of her mother's long illness, and the shock of her 
death, and was in retirement under the care of a 
trained nurse. Clemens, according to his biog- 
rapher, Albert Bigelow Paine, was lonely in No. 
21, and sought to liven matters by instaUing a 
great iEolian Orchestrelle. In January, 1906, 
Paine paid his first visit to the house and found 
the great man propped up in bed, with his head 
at the foot, turning over the pages of " Huckle- 
berry Finn " in search of a paragraph about which 
some random correspondent had asked explana- 
tion. 

But to go back long before Clemens's time, 
and to begin in the neighbourhood of the old 
square. In the days when Fifth Avenue was 

-i-152-i- 



LITERARY LANDMARKS AND FIGURES 

young Poe must have found his way there, accom- 
panied, perhaps, by the pale, invahded Virginia, 
to gaze at the fine new houses, for only a few 
hundred yards away was his last city residence, 
where Lowell called and found his host " not him- 
self that day," and where were penned " The 
Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar," the "Phi- 
losophy of Composition," and " The Literati of 
'New York." Then there was the house in 
Waverly Place, the home of Anne Lynch, the poet 
of "The Battle of Life," which was a kind of 
literary salon of its day, where Poe once read 
aloud the newly pubhshed " Raven," and where 
Bayard Taylor visited, and Taylor's friend Caro- 
line Kirkland, and Margaret Fuller, and Lydia 
Child, and Ann S. Stephens, who wrote " Fashion 
and Famine " and " Mary Derwent," and young 
Richard Henry Stoddard, and Elizabeth Barstow, 
who became his wife. Not far from the Lynch 
house was the humble dwelling in which Poe wrote 
" The Fall of the House of Usher." 

Just off the Square, at 21 Washington Place, 
Henry Jones was born. In a house that once 
stood at the northwest corner Bayard Taylor lived 
for a time and wrote the " Epistle from Mount 
Tmolus," and some of the " Poems of the Orient." 
In later days a large apartment house grew up 
on the site, and there George Parsons Lathrop 
dwelt, and penned some of the verse of his 

-e- 153 -J- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

" Days and Dreams," while his wife, the daughter 
of the author of " The Scarlet Letter," composed 
portions of " Along the Shore." In the old Uni- 
versity building on the east side of the Square 
Theodore Winthrop — later as Colonel Winthrop 
to meet a soldier's death at Big Bethel — wrote 
" John Brent," and the famous but utterly dreary 
" Cecil Dreeme," and a few doors below is the 
red brick apartment where in more modern days 
so many of the younger scribblers have toiled in 
the years of theii- pseudo-Bohemia. Across the 
Square N. P. Willis, the town's crack descriptive 
writer, was in the habit of making his way, and 
on one occasion with sorry results. The actor, 
Edwin Forrest, appeared in his path and fell 
upon him with vigorous assault. Bystanders were 
on the point of intervening. " Stand back, gen- 
tlemen!" cried the Thespian. "He has inter- 
fered in my domestic affau'S." And he proceeded 
with the whacking. 

Not only the Square, but the side streets below 
Fourteenth, must be taken into a consideration of 
the old literary landmarks and figures of Fifth 
Avenue. Thackeray was only one of the foreign 
authors visiting America who found ease and 
comfort in the club-house of the Century in Chn- 
ton Place. In the same thoroughfare lived and 
died Evert Augustus Duyckinck, co-author with 
his brother George of the " Cyclopedia of Amer- 

-f-154-i- 



LITERARY LANDMARKS AND FIGURES 

ican Literature," and author of " The War for 
the Union"; and Mrs. Botta, the Anne Lynch 
of earlier mention, had for a time a home there; 
and in the street Richard Watson Gilder dwelt 
later, and in No. 33, in a third-story back room, 
a young clerk named Thomas Bailey Aldrich 
wrote his "Ballad of Babie Bell"; and there, at 
No. 84 which was the residence of Judge Daly, 
the African explorer Paul Du Chaillu wrote fic- 
tion and fact that by sceptical contemporaries was 
generally accepted as fiction. A block farther 
north was another home of Mrs. Botta, and the 
house of the actress who is remembered as Tom 
Moore's first sweetheart, and the one-time abode 
of William Cullen Bryant, who wrote of it as 
being near the home of Irving's friend Brevoort. 
The neighbourhood is rich with memories. We 
have but to beckon and the ghosts of those literary 
men and women whose names have been forgotten, 
and of those whose reputations have endured, step 
forth in imagination to fill the street. I see Irving, 
down from his Sunny side estate for a visit to the 
town that was once the fat village of his Diedrich 
Knickerbocker, strolling over from the Irving 
Place structure that is reputed to have been his, 
but which was not his, to study the new manners 
and fashions, and to mull on the startling changes 
and swift passage of time. I see the irascible 
author of the " Leather Stocking Tales," for the 

H- 155 -f- 



FIPTH AVENUE 

moment weary of squabbling over land agree- 
ments with his Cooperstown neighbours and prose- 
cuting suits against up-§tate newspapers, stealing 
into New York for a glimpse of his first city 
residence down in Beach Street in Greenwich 
Village, where he wrote " The Pilot," and 
" Lionel Lincoln," and incidentally satisfying his 
curiosity as to the new developments in urban ele- 
gance and fashion. I can see FitzGreene Halleck 
and Joseph Rodman Drake, a mile or two away 
from their accustomed haunts; and any one else 
whom it pleases me to see; our foreign guests 
and critics, Dickens, looking about superciliously, 
or Anthony Trollope, breathing hard, or Trollope 
mere, or Harriet Martineau, or Captain Marryat, 
or Mayne Reid, or Samuel Lover. For in a case 
like this a trifling matter like an anachronism or 
a misstatement counts for little or nothing. 

On Ninth Street, just west of the Charles De 
Rhams house, which was formerly the Henry 
Brevoort house, are the two or three buildings 
that in bygone days made up the Hotel Griffon. 
There, twenty years or so ago, the late Thomas 
A. Janvier lived and studied the queer Latin- 
American types that went into his stories of the 
Efferanti family. There also William Dean How- 
ells frequently dined, and the late Edmund Clar- 
ence Stedman and Richard Watson Gilder went 
from time to time. Then the older and more 

-*- 156 -t- 



LITERARY LANDMARKS AND FIGURES 

dignified men drifted away, and the tables in the 
dining room rang with the laughter and high 
talk of a younger group, known as the " Griffou 
Push." Brave dreams were there, and limitless 
ambitions, and some achievement. But in many 
cases Pallida mors came knocking all too soon, 
and those who lived sought other environments, 
and the " Push " was no more, and the little hotel 
became a memory of yesterday. 

There were literary associations about the old 
Studio Building in Tenth Street long before the 
*' Old Masters " of New York went there to work, 
and Carmencita came to dance in Chase's studio. 
In the big brown structure Henry T. Tuckerman 
once lived, and kept his library, and wrote " The 
Criterion," and the "Book of the Artists," and 
entertained his friends of the world of letters; 
and there Fitzjames O'Brien, the genial Fitz, 
the " gipsy of letters," the author of " The Dia- 
mond Lens," visited him. Almost across the 
street, in a little rear wooden house that was to 
serve as the New York home of F. Hopkinson 
Smith's Colonel Carter of Cartersville, was at one 
time the quarters of the Tile Club, where, in 
the golden days, men ceased to be known by the 
stiff and formal names used in more ceremonious 
surroundings, and became instead the Owl, or 
the Griffin, or the Pagan, or the Chestnut, or the 
Puritan, or the O'Donoghue, or the Bone, or 

-«- 157 -H- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

the Grasshopper, or the Marine, or the Terrapin, 
or the Gaul, or the Bulgarian, or Briareus, or 
Sirius, or Cadmius, or Polyphemus. 

A httle off the Avenue, on East Twentieth 
Street, was the home of the Gary sisters, Alice 
and Phoebe; and to the unpretentious little brick 
dwelling of Sunday evenings repaired Stoddard, 
and Whittier, and Aldrich, and Ripley, and Her- 
man Melville, and Mary L. Booth, who after- 
wards became Mrs. Lamb, and wrote the " His- 
tory of New York," and Samuel G. Goodrich, 
the famous " Peter Parley," and Alice Haven, 
popular writer of juvenile tales, and Justin 
McCarthy, and James Parton, husband of 
" Fanny Fern," himself one of these rare scribes 
of his age whose writing can be genuinely enjoyed 
by readers of the present generation, and occa- 
sionally, grim old Horace Greeley, who, if, as he 
said, in the course of forty years had never been 
able to get a day off to go " a-fishing," managed, 
now and then, to find an evening of leisure in 
which to divert himself with the pleasant, bookish 
talk at No. 53. A salon as " was a salon " — that 
of the Gary girls. With the vast, unwieldy city 
of today in mind we wonder how they managed 
it, by what charm and persuasion they gathered 
with such regularity so many of the literati really 
worth while. But it was a smaller town then. 
It was easier to be neighbourly. When Thack- 

-?- 158-8- 



LITERARY LANDMARKS AND FIGURES 

eray, on the evening of New Year's Day, 1853, 
journeyed in a sleigh from his hotel to a reception 
held in a house on the west side of Fifth Avenue 
between Thirty-seventh and Thirty-eighth Streets, 
the destination was characterized as a villa in the 
country. 

To revert to the note with which this chapter 
began. Were it possible for us to be transported 
back to the London of the fifties the sight of a 
Thackeray, a Dickens, a Tennyson, or a Brown- 
ing would not have been necessary to stir our 
pulses. It would have been an event to have 
seen in the flesh some of the humbler men, G. P. 
R. James, or Samuel Warren, of " Ten Thousand 
a Year," or any of the ephemeral celebrities who 
adorned the pages of the Maclise Gallery of Por- 
traits. So why disdain, merely because they are 
of our own time, the makers of copy who may 
be seen on the Fifth Avenue of today? I remem- 
ber my first literary walk down the Avenue. It 
was in the company of Mr. Edward W. Townsend. 
I was very young, and he was the creator of 
Chimmie Fadden, and the author of " A Daughter 
of the Tenements," and I wished that all the 
world might see. Then the time came when the 
sight of literary faces was less of a novelty, when 
it was not unusual to meet the author of " The 
Rise of Silas Lapham," who had left his home 
on Fifty-ninth Street, facing the Park, for an 

-i- 159-*- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

afternoon stroll, and to receive his nod of kindly 
recognition; or to pass Edmund Clarence Sted- 
man, to whom I owed, as so many others have 
owed, the first words of encouragement, or to see 
Frank R. Stockton, or Mr. Gilder and Mr. John- 
son of the " Century," or Brander Matthews on 
his way to the club in West Forty-third Street. 

Looking down upon the Avenue, at the corner 
of Thirty-third Street, just below the Waldorf, 
are familiar windows. They belonged to a hotel 
that was, or is, the Cambridge, and in the rooms 
behind the windows, I recall occasional pleasant 
and profitable hours spent in the company of 
Richard Harding Davis. There was another win- 
dow some blocks farther down, in the building 
occupying the point where Fifth Avenue and 
Broadway join. That window gave light to the 
workshop of James L. Ford, the obstinate satirist, 
who resents the charge of amiability, and who will 
not be pleased if you tell him that in the pages 
of " The Literary Shop " he did the best work 
of his life. At another corner, between the two 
already mentioned, the early riser of a few years 
ago might have seen the literary pride of Indiana 
assuming the duties of the traffic policeman who 
had not yet reached his post, and with the aid 
of a whistle joyously acquired ordering east and 
west-bound vehicles to proceed and north and 
south-bound vehicles to halt. 

-h- 160 -»- 



LITERARY LANDMARKS AND FIGURES 

If you know your Avenue well enough, the 
countenances of nearly all of the " Best-Selling " 
kings are easy of recognition. Arriving at the 
Thirties, Robert W. Chambers is likely to turn 
off, bound for one of the antique shops that are 
to be found in the parallel thoroughfare two blocks 
to the east. At any point on the Avenue between 
the Washington Arch and the Plaza you may 
stumble upon the cane-swinging discoverer of the 
principality of Graustark, and the cane-swinging 
inventor of the " Tennessee Shad," appraising 
together the new styles in women's hats, or in- 
vestigating the display in a shop -window. What 
is the subject that they are so earnestly discussing? 
The Influence of Rabelais on the Monastic System 
of the Fifteenth Century? The obscurity of 
Robert Browning? Whether or not the art of 
the novel is a finer art than it was in the days of 
the Victorians? Not at all. The point in dispute 
is the figure of Delehanty's batting average in 
1867. The vital importance of the matter is the 
reason of their obvious excitement. 

Of more serious aspect is Mr. James Lane 
Allen, whose tales of the Kentucky Blue Grass 
Region I hope will be read as they deserve for 
many generations to come. Rex Beach swings 
along musing perhaps on the solitudes of Lake 
Hopatcong. Rupert Hughes studies the faces in 
the Avenue throng with the hope of finding the 

-j-161-i- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

inspiration for a title for the projected novel that 
will be more eccentric, if possible, than the title 
of the last. Jesse Lynch Williams and Arthur 
Train seek rest after their perambulatory efforts 
in the luxurious seclusion of the University Club 
at Fifth Avenue and Fifty-fourth Street— the 
" Morgue " of the flippant — where, from the win- 
dows, the former first saw My Lost Duchess, 
and the latter discovered the possibilities of McAl- 
lister. A few years ago in one of the business 
buildings that had broken into the residential 
stretch below Fourteenth Street, was the office 
that F. Marion Crawford always maintained for 
use during the occasional visits he made to New 
York. The tall figure of the author of the 
Saracinesca novels was a familiar sight on the 
Avenue of the late nineties and the first years of 
the present century. But his stays were brief. 
The call of the vineyard-covered mountains about 
Sorrento was too strong. 

From time to time the Avenue has seen literary 
visitors whose appearance could not be regarded 
as a temporary home coming. Twenty years have 
passed since Rudyard Kipling paid us his last 
visit, and it was a very different Fifth Avenue 
from the street of today that he knew. But even 
then it was a part of the town that moved him 
to dreams of " heavenly loot." There was, until 
a year or two ago at least, in an office at Fourth 

-h- 162 -i- 



LITERARY LANDMARKS AND FIGURES 

Avenue and Thirtieth Street, an old cane-bottomed 
chair. Once it had been in a room on the seventh 
story of a building at Fifth Avenue and Twenty- 
first Street, and there it had been known as the 
Barrie Chair, for in it the creator of Thrums had 
been wont to curl himself up, and from its com- 
fortable depths, peer through the window down 
at the busy sidewalk below. In the church-going 
crowds of a Fifth Avenue Sunday there are many 
who recall the sturdy figure of Dr. John Watson, 
the Ian MacLaren of the " Beside the Bonnie 
Briar Bush " tales, who on several occasions occu- 
pied a New York pulpit. The last time those 
who sat under him saw a man apparently in the 
full vigour of rugged health. Yet a few days 
later brought the news of his sudden death, far 
away from the heather of his Scotland. The 
author of " The Beloved Vagabond " is no more 
a stranger to the Avenue than he is to Bond 
Street, or the Rue de la Paix; and Arnold Ben- 
nett has recorded impressions that are at once 
disparaging and polite; and Jeffery Farnol used 
to trudge it, impecunious and unknown, before 
" The Broad Highway " came to strike the note 
of popular favour. 

Many more are the names that might be men- 
tioned, for the street has ever been a magnet, 
and even those who toil in the attics of Bohemia 
find their way here, in the hours of leisure, to 



FIFTH AVENUE 

see and to be observed. Grub Street has assumed 
the garments of propriety, and shorn itself of its 
long hair, and in the prosperous, well-dressed 
throng that surges up and down the Fifth Avenue 
pavement, its denizens pass to and fro, no longer 
shyly, furtively, and conspicuously out of place, 
but with the easy assurance of those who are " to 
the manor born." 



164f 



CHAPTER IX 

Fifth Avenue in Fiction 

Fifth Avenue in Fiction — Pages of Romance — The Henry 
James Heroes and Heroines — George William Curtiss's 
" Prue and I " — Edgar Fawcett and Edgar Saltus — The 
" Big Four " of Archibald Clavering Gunter — The Home of 
Dr. Sloper — O. Henry and Arthur Train — Bunner and 
Washington Square — " Predestined " — The De Rham House 
and Van Bibber's Burglar — Delmonico's — The " Amen Cor- 
ner " — Union and Madison Squares — The Coming of Potash 
and Perlmutter — Up the Avenue. 

To Macaulay's New Zealander, contemplating 
from London Bridge the ruins of St. Paul's, and 
the miles upon miles of silent stones stretching 
to north and west and east, there would undoubt- 
edly have come the desire to reconstruct a mental 
picture of the vast, dead city in certain of the 
various periods in which it had been teeming and 
throbbing with human life. Had the wish become 
the task, formal history would have played its 
part. Informal history would have proved more 
fruitful, and bygone days would have taken shape 
in the study of old prints, letters, and diaries. 
But for the full flavour of the town that once was 
and now had become crumbling dust he would 
have turned to pages that had been professedly 
pages of romance. 

-»-165-»- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

Suppose Elizabethan London had been his 
especial interest. That he would have seen 
through the eyes of Sir John Falstaff and his 
riotous, dissolute cronies of the Boar's Head 
Tavern. Georgian London? What better com- 
panion could he have had in his scheme of investi- 
gation than Mr. Thomas Jones, recently come up 
from the West Country? For a vision of Corin- 
thian London could he have done better than take 
up Conan Doyle's " Rodney Stone," with its vivid 
pictures of the stilted eccentrics who hovered about 
the Prince-Regent, the coffee-houses thronged 
with England's warriors of the land and sea, and 
the haunts of the hard-faced men of the Prize 
Ring? 

The Artful Dodger, guiding the innocent Oliver 
to the den of Fagin the Jew, would have intro- 
duced that last New Zealander to the sordid sec- 
tion of London about Great Saffron Hill and 
Little Saffron Hill that existed before the con- 
struction of the Holborn Viaduct. In the pages 
of Thackeray and George Meredith he would 
have studied the West-End of Victorian days. 
Certain seamy aspects of London life of the last 
years of the nineteenth century would have been 
revealed in the novels of George Gissing; and the 
books of a score of scribes, whose permanent place 
in letters is still a matter of conjecture, would 
have flashed glimpses of the city's streets, foibles, 

-*-166-H- 



FIFTH AVENUE IN FICTION 

manners, and emotions in the early years of the 
twentieth century. 

Our literature has, as yet, given us no figure 
analogous to that Last New Zealander of Ma- 
caulay. But in the bustling New York of fifty 
or one hundred years hence the dreamer or the 
student wishing to feel how the inhabitants of 
Manhattan lived three or four score years ago, 
or how we are living today, will not disdain to 
turn over pages originally designed to lighten the 
tedium of idle hours. 

Now and again, in the novels of the fifties and 
sixties, there are ghmpses of the stretch from 
Washington Square to Fourteenth Street, but 
the greater Fifth Avenue, as a factor in fiction, 
dates from about the time when Daisy Miller 
became a type. To those who really understand 
them, every one of the great, vital streets of the 
world has a soul as well as a body. The social 
invader from the West, the merchant whose estab- 
lishment still found profit in Grand Street, the 
banker from Broad Street, or the ship's chandler 
from South, the club awakening to the fact that 
its quarters on Broadway or in one of the side 
streets near Irving Place was too far down- 
town, or in size inadequate to its growing member- 
ship — those were the agencies that wrought the 
Avenue's material development. But it was the 
American travelling in Europe in the days when 



FIFTH AVENUE 

we first found Henry James's heroine on the 
shores of Lake Geneva and later in Rome, when 
transatlantic voyagers were not so commonplace 
as they became later, whose pangs of home- 
sickness in his pension in the Rue de Clichy in 
Paris, or his hotel in Sorrento, first invested Fifth 
Avenue with a spirit. It was different perhaps 
when he returned home with a slight pose of 
foreign manners, to bask for a brief moment in 
the sunny flood of distinction that was due him 
as a kind of later Sir John Frankhn. But over 
there what were cathedral naves and spires, or art 
galleries, or purple Mediterranean waves, or la- 
boriously acquired French verbs, to the jutting 
brown-stone stoops and the maples breaking into 
blossom? 

There was a kind of writing, not fish or flesh 
or good red herring, but just the same altogether 
charming in its day, inspiring of dreams, and a 
vehicle for pleasant fancy. It belonged to what, 
from our grave old point of view, was the youth 
of the world, and the spirit of youth, its ingenu- 
ousness, and its ardour, were needed to appreciate 
it. Ik Marvel's " Reveries of a Bachelor " was 
of that genre — and how the hearth logs blazed 
and the fair faces flickered in the flames in those 
pages of Mr. Donald G. Mitchell! — and George 
William Curtiss's " Prue and I " ; and the latter 
book was one of the first in which was to be 

-J- 168 -J- 



FIFTH AVENUE IN FICTION 

found the flavour of the old Fifth Avenue. Then 
there were the forgotten novehsts of the seventies 
and early eighties, and some who are not quite 
forgotten, such as the two Edgars, Fawcett and 
Saltus, and the days when every visiting English- 
man, no matter what he might have done in real 
life, in fiction had to stay, while in New York, 
at the Brevoort House. All sorts of inconse- 
quential novels flit through the mind in recalling 
that bygone period. There was a gentleman 
whose atrociously written, but marvellously con- 
structed " thrillers " were to be found in every 
deck chair at the noon hour on transatlantic 
steamers of thirty years ago. That was the late 
Archibald Clavering Gunter. The present gen- 
eration knows him and his works not at all; but 
how a past generation used to read and reread 
" Mr. Barnes of New York," and " Mr. Potter 
of Texas," and " Miss Nobody of Nowhere," and 
" That Frenchman," which should have been 
called " M. De Vernay of Paris." Those were 
the earliest and the " big four." The list of suc- 
cessors is a long one, but that certain something, 
that indefinable quality, which had made the first 
books great trash was irrevocably gone. Of all 
the flamboyant characters of the tales Mr. Barnes 
was deservedly the most popular, and at such 
times as he was not winning international rifle 
matches at Monte Carlo, or racing about Europe 

-e- 169 -+• 



FIFTH AVENUE 

in respectable pursuit of desirable young ladies, 
he inliabited a dwelling on lower Fifth Avenue. 
Practically all Fifth Avenue were the scenes of 
" Miss Xobody of Xowhere," with its charming 
heroine and her adopted parents, its wicked Eng- 
lish nobleman, and its comical httle Anglo-maniac 
dude. Under some name or other a " Gussie Van 
Beekman " was a necessary ingredient of every 
Gunter novel. 

It is a far cry from Gunter to Henry James, 
though each wrought according to his lights, and 
served his purpose in his time. It was when the 
Avenue was in its infancy that Dr. Sloper, of 
James's " Washington Square," went to hve in 
the brick house with white stone trimmings, that, 
practically unchanged, may be seen today, diag- 
onally across the street from the Arch. The 
novehst wrote of the locahty as having " a kind 
of estabhshed repose which is not of frequent 
occurrence in other quarters of the long, shrill 
city"; and ascribed to it, "a richer, riper look 
than any of the upper ramifications of the great 
longitudinal thoroughfare — the look of having 
had something of a social history." That " richer, 
riper look." that suggestion of a past, is there to- 
day, and is likely to be there tomorrow. The 
particular Sloper house is quite easy of identifica- 
tion. It is the third from the corner as one 
goes westward from the Avenue. In 1835, when 



FIFTH AVENUE IN FICTION 

Dr. Sloper first took possession, moving uptown 
from the neighbourhood of the City Hall, which 
had seen its best days socially, the Square, then 
the ideal of quiet and genteel retirement, was 
enclosed by a wooden pahng. The edifice in 
which the Slopers hved and its neighbours were 
then thought to embody the last results of archi- 
tectural science. It actually dates to 1831. Among 
the merchants who built in that year were Thomas 
Suffern, Saul AUen, John Johnston, George 
Griswold, James Boorman, and WiUiam C. Rhine- 
lander. It was their type of house that was ac- 
cepted for the neighbourhood as the first streets be- 
gan to open to the right and left of Fifth Avenue. 
That northern stretch of the . Square, first in- 
vaded in fiction by Henry James, has ever been 
a favourite background of the story-spinners, who 
never tire of contrasting its tone of well-bred 
aristocracy with the squalor, half -Bohemian and 
half -proletarian, that faces it from across the Park. 
In fiction one does not necessarily have to be of 
an old New York family in order to inhabit one 
of those north-side dwellings. Robert Walmsley, 
of O. Henry's " The Defeat of the City," hved 
there, and the boyhood to which he looked back 
was one spent on an up-state farm; while another 
erstwhile tenant in the exclusive row was the 
devious Artemas Quibble, of iMr. Arthur Train's 
narrative, who began hfe humbly somewhere in 

-i~ 171 -i- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

grey New England, and ended it, so far as the 
reader was informed, in Sing Sing Prison. Then 
there was the home of Mrs. Martin, the " Duchess 
of Washington Square " of Brander Matthews's 
" The Last Meeting," and that of Miss Grandish, 
of Julian Ralph's " People We Pass," and the 
house of Mrs. Delaney, of Edgar Fawcett's 
" Rutherford," and the structure which inspired 
one-half of Edward W. Townsend's " Just Across 
the Square," and the five-room apartment " at the 
top of a house with dormer windows on the north 
side " where Sanford lived according to F. Hop- 
kinson Smith's " Caleb AVest," and where his 
guests, looking out, could see the " night life of 
the Park, miniature figures strolling about under 
the trees, flashing in brilliant light or swallowed 
up in dense shadow as they passed in the glare 
of many lamps scattered among the budding 
foliage." Also over the Square, regarded in the 
light of fiction, is the friendly shadow of Runner, 
who liked it at any time, but liked it best of all 
at night, with the great dim branches swaying 
and breaking in the breeze, the gas lamps flicker- 
ing and blinking, when the tumults and the shout • 
ings of the day were gone and " only a tramp or 
something worse in woman's shape was hurry- 
ing across the bleak space, along the winding 
asphalt, walking over the Potter's Field of the 
past on the way to the Potter's Field to be." 




t I 







*AT THE NORTHWEST CORNER OF FIFTY-FOURTH STREET IS 
THE UNIVERSITY CLUB, TO THE MIND OF ARNOLD 
BENNETT ('YOUR UNITED STATES'), THE FINEST OF 
ALL THE FINE STRUCTURES THAT LINE THE AVENUE" 



FIFTH AVENUE IN FICTION 

But to turn into the Avenue proper, and to 
follow the trail of the novelists northward. At 
the very point of departure we are on the site of 
the imaginary structure that gave the title to 
Leroy Scott's " No. 13 Washington Square," for 
the reason that there is no such number at all, 
and that the house in question must have accu- 
pied the space between Nos. 12 and 14, respec- 
tively, on the east and west corners facing Wa- 
verly Place. Before the next street is reached we 
have passed the home of the Huntingdons of 
Edgar Fawcett's " A Hopeless Case," and at the 
southwest corner of the Avenue and Eighth 
Street, facing the Brevoort, is No. 68 Clinton 
Place, which was not only the setting, but also 
the raison d'etre of Thomas A. Janvier's " A Tem- 
porary Deadlock." Almost diagonally across the 
street is an old brick house, with Ionic pillars of 
marble and a fanlight at the arched entrance — 
one of those houses that, to use the novelist's 
words, " preserve unobtrusively, in the midst of 
a city that is being constantly rebuilt, the pure 
beauty of Colonial dwellings." It was the home 
of the Ferrols of Stephen French Whitman's 
" Predestined," one of the books of real power 
that appear from time to time, to be strangely 
neglected, and through that neglect to tempt the 
discriminating reader to contempt for the literary 
judgment of his age. 

-f-173-J- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

At the northwest corner of Ninth Street there 
is a brownish-green building erected in the long, 
long ago to serve as a domicile of the Brevoort 
family, which had once exercised pastoral sway 
over so many acres of this region. Later it be- 
came the home of the De Rhams. But to Richard 
Harding Davis, then a reporter on the " Evening 
Sun," it had nothing of the flavour of the Pa- 
troons. It was simply the house where young 
Cortlandt Van Bibber, returning from Jersey 
City where he had witnessed the " go " between 
" Dutchy " Mack and a coloured person profes- 
sionally known as the Black Diamond, found his 
burglar. There is no mistaking the house, which 
" faced the avenue," nor the stone wall that ran 
back to the brown stable which opened on the side 
street, nor the door in the wall, that, opening cau- 
tiously, showed Van Bibber the head of his quarry. 
" The house was tightly closed, as if some one 
was lying inside dead," was a line of Mr. Davis's 
description. Many years after the writing of 
" Van Bibber's Burglar," another maker of fiction 
associated with New York was standing before 
the Ninth Street house, of the history of which 
he knew nothing. " Grim tragedy lives there, or 
should live there," said Owen Johnson, " I never 
pass here without the feeling that there is some 
one lying dead inside." 

Van Bibber's presence in the neighbourhood was 

-i- 174 -h 



FIFTH AVENUE IN FICTION 

in no wise surprising, for it was one of his 
favourite haunts when he was not engaged farther 
up the Avenue, in his daily labour, which was, as 
he explained to the chance acquaintance met at 
the ball in Lyric Hall described in " Cinderella," 
" mixing cocktails at the Knickerbocker Club." 
Only a few doors distant from the Ninth Street 
house there is an apartment hotel known as the 
Berkeley, and it was to a Berkeley apartment 
that Van Bibber, as related in " Her First Ap- 
pearance," took the child that he had practically 
kidnapped to restore her to her father and to be 
rewarded for his intrusion by being sensibly called 
a well-meaning fool. But there is another apart- 
ment house at the south-west corner of the Avenue 
and Twenty-eighth Street which better fits the 
description, which tells how Van Bibber, from 
the windows, could see the many gas lamps of 
Broadway where it crossed the Avenue a few 
blocks away, and the bunches of light on Madison 
Square Garden. 

Edgar Fawcett was hardly of the generation 
of the Flora McFhmseys. As a matter of fact 
he was a small boy in knickerbockers when the 
famous William Allen Butler poem, " Nothing to 
Wear," first appeared in the pages of " Harper's 
Weekly." But Miss McFlimsey was an enduring 
young lady, who, for many years was accepted 
as symbolizing the foibles of Madison Square, and 

-J- 175 -J- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

she was in a measure in Fawcett's mind when he 
wrote, in " A Gentleman of Leisure," that vigor- 
ous description contrasting socially the stretch of 
the Avenue below Fourteenth Street with the 
later development a dozen blocks to the north. 
In another Fawcett novel, " Olivia Delaplaine," 
we find the home of the heroine's husband in 
Tenth Street, just off the Avenue; and, reverting 
to " A Gentleman of Leisure," Clinton AVain- 
wright, the gentleman in question, lived, like a 
" visiting Englishman," at the Brevoort. 

There have been many Delmonicos. But for 
the purposes of fiction there has never been one 
just like the establishment that occupied a corner 
at the junction of the Avenue and Fourteenth 
Street. It was a more limited town in those days. 
The novelist wishing to depict his hero doing the 
right thing in the right way by his heroine did 
not have the variety of choice he has now. Two 
squares away, the Academj^ of Music was, the- 
atrically and operaticallj^, the social centre, so to 
carry on the narrative with a proper regard for 
the conventions, the preceding dinner or the fol- 
lowing supper was necessarily at the old Del- 
monico's. They were good trenchermen and 
trencherwomen, those heroes and heroines of yes- 
terday! Many oyster-beds were depleted, and 
bins of rare vintage emptied to satisfy the healthy 
appetites of the inked pages. Somehow the mouth 

-i-176-»- 



FIFTH AVENUE IN FICTION 

waters with the memory. When Delmonico's 
moved on to Twenty-sixth Street, and from its 
terraced tables its patrons could look up at grace- 
ful Diana, there were many famous dinners of 
fiction, such as the one, for example, consumed 
by the otherwise faultless Walters, for a brief 
period in the service of Mr. Van Bibber — the" 
menu selected : " Little Neck clams first, with 
chablis, and pea-soup, and caviare on toast, before 
the oyster crabs, with Johannisberger Cabinet ; then 
an entree of calves' brains and rice; then no roast, 
but a bird, cold asparagus with French dressing, 
Camembert cheese, and Turkish coffee," may be 
accepted as indicating the gastronomical taste of 
the author in the days when youth meant good 
digestion — but with the departure from the old 
Fourteenth Street corner something of the flavour 
of the name passed forever. 

If New York has never had another restaurant 
that meant to the noveUst just what the traditional 
Delmonico's meant, there has also never been an- 
other hotel like the old Fifth Avenue. In actual 
life the so-called *' Ladies' Parlour " on the second 
floor, reached, if I remember rightly, by means 
of an entrance on the Twenty-third Street side, 
was dreary enough; but turn to the pages of the 
romance of the sixties and seventies and eighties, 
and on the heavily upholstered sofas enamoured 
couples sat in furtive meeting, and words of en- 

-»-177-i- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

dearment were whispered, and all the stock in- 
trigue of fiction was set in motion. Then, on the 
ground floor, was the Amen Corner, without which 
no tale of pohtical life was complete, and the 
various rooms for more formal gatherings, such 
as the one in which took place " The Great Secre- 
tary of State Interview," as narrated by Jesse 
Lynch Williams many years ago. 

But for the full flavour of the romance of this 
section of Fifth Avenue it is not necessary to 
go back to the leisurely novelists of the eighties 
and before. Recall the work of a man who, a 
short ten years ago, was turning out from week 
to week the mirth-provoking, amazement-provok- 
ing tales dealing with the life of what he termed 
his " Little Old Bagdad on-the-Subway," his 
"Noisyville on-the-Hudson," his "City of Cha- 
meleon Changes." For the Avenue as the ex- 
pression of the city's wealth and magnificence 
and aristocracy the late O. Henry had little love. 
The glitter and pomp and pageantry were not 
for " the likes of him." He preferred the more 
plebeian trails, the department-store infested thor- 
oughfare to the west, with the clattering " El " 
road overhead; or Fourth Avenue to the east, 
beginning at the statue of " George the Vera- 
cious," running between the silent and terrible 
mountains, finally, with a shriek and a crash, to 
dive headlong into the tunnel at Thirty-fourth 

-J- 178-?- 



FIFTH AVENUE IN FICTION 

Street, and never to be seen again; or even some 
purlieu of the great East Side, where he could 
sit listening at ease in the humble shop of Fitbad 
the Tailor. 

There was, however, one portion of land be- 
longing to the Avenue where he felt himself 
thoroughly at home. When, of a summer's eve- 
ning, darkness had fallen, and the leaves were 
fluttering in the warm breeze, and high overhead 
Diana's light was twinkling, and the derelicts 
were gathered on the Park benches, the world was 
full of delightful mystery and magic. Close to 
the curb, at one corner of the Square, a low grey 
motor-car with engine silent. Then whimsical 
fancy and a haunting memory of Robert Louis 
Stevenson's " New Arabian Nights " builded up 
the story " While the Auto Waits." Or perhaps 
the sight of a car swiftly moving with its 
emergency tire dangerously loose, and to that 
fertile brain were flashed the ingredients of " The 
Fifth Wheel." " There is an aristocracy of the 
public parks and even of the vagabonds who use 
them for their private apartments," wrote Sidney 
Porter in " The Shocks of Doom." Vallance of 
the story felt rather than knew this, but when 
he stepped down out of his world into chaos his 
feet brought him directly to Madison Square. 
Probably Sherard Plumer, the down-and-out 
artist, was another to recognize its quality even 

4- 179 -h 



FIFTH AVENUE 

before he fell in with Carson Chalmers, as out- 
lined in "A Madison Square Arabian Night"; and 
also Marcus Clayton of Roanoke County, Virginia, 
and Eva Bedford, of Bedford County of the same 
State; and the disreputable Soapy, of "The Cop 
and the Anthem," when he sought a park bench 
on which to ponder over just what violation of 
the law would insure his deportation to Black- 
well's Island, which was his Palm Beach and 
Riviera for the winter months. Here, to O. 
Henry, was the commonn ground of all, the 
happy and the unfortunate, the just and the un- 
just, the Caliph and the cad; and far above, 
against the sky, was the dainty goddess who 
presided over the destinies of all. Miss Diana, 
who, according to the opinion expressed by Mrs. 
Liberty in " The Lady Higher Up," has the best 
job for a statue in the whole town, with the Cat- 
Show, and the Horse-Show, and the military 
tournaments where the privates " look grand as 
generals, and the generals try to look grand as 
floorwalkers," and the Sportsman's Show, and 
above all, the French Ball, " where the original 
Cohens and the Robert Emmet-Sangerbund So- 
ciety dance the Highland fling with one another." 
Other figures of fiction, in fancy, flit across the 
Square, or throng the near-by streets. In that 
dense, pushing, alien-tongued multitude that at 
the noon hour congests the sidewalks of the 

-*- 180 -f- 



FIFTH AVENUE IN FICTION 

Avenue to the south of Twenty-third Street, one 
may catch a glimpse of Mr. Montague Glass's 
Abe Potash and Morris Perlmutter, long since 
moved uptown from their original loft in Division 
Street in the stories, and in Leonard Street in 
fact. The crowd is thickest at the Twenty-first 
Street corner, where, in the novels of other days, 
the mature burghers used to watch the passing 
ladies from the windows of the Union Club. But 
there is little inchnation to tarry long there. The 
environment of the Square is a pleasanter en- 
vironment. When Delmonico's was at the 
Twenty-sixth Street corner, the hero of one of 
Brander Matthews's " Vignettes of Manhattan " 
pointed out of one of its windows and confessed 
that, failure in life as he was, he would die out 
of sight of the tower of the Madison Square 
Garden. A reminiscent sign or two is all that 
is left of the old Hotel Brunswick, which, among 
the hostelries of other days, yielded precedence 
only to the Fifth Avenue and the Brevoort as a 
factor in fiction. 

Reverting to Mr. Davis, the Tower was one 
of the staple subjects of conversation of his heroes 
and heroines when they happened to be in the 
Congo, or Morocco, or looking longingly from 
the decks of steamers in South American waters; 
and the shadowy personage — very probably Van 
Bibber — who took " A Walk up the Avenue " 

-e- 181 -i- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

started on his journey from the Square. Van 
Bibber! Of course it was Van Bibber. It must 
have been Van Bibber. For when he reached 
Thirty-second Street a half-dozen men nodded to 
him in that casual manner in which men nod to 
a passing club-mate. The particular club has 
since moved some thirty blocks uptown, but to 
the old building you will find frequent references 
not only in the Davis stories, but also in the 
novels of Robert W. Chambers, who was in the 
habit of indicating it as the Patroon. 

Beyond Madison Square the novelists of earher 
generations seldom went. It is to the men of to- 
day, above all to those who have been specializing 
in what may be called the New York " novel a la 
mode " that we must turn in order to follow 
farther the trail. Here is the stately street as 
portrayed in Mr. Chambers's " The Danger 
Mark," or " The Firing Line," or " The Younger 
Set," or in any one of a dozen swiftly moving 
serials of the hour, whether the author be Mr. 
Rupert Hughes, or Mr. Owen Johnson, or Mr. 
Gouverneur Morris, or Mr. Rex Beach. The 
novel may serve its light purpose today and to- 
morrow be forgotten. But the current of human 
life up and down the Avenue is ever running 
more swiftly. 



182 



CHAPTER X 

Trails of Bohemia 

Trails of Bohemia — The Avenue and its Tributaries — The 
" Musketeers of the Brush " — The Voice of the Ghetto — 
South Fifth Avenue and the Old French Quarter — The 
Garibaldi — " A la Ville de Rouen " — The Restaurant du 
Grand Vatel — The New Bohemia — The Lane of the Mad 
Eccentrics — Sheridan Square — " The Pirate's Den " — Ab- 
solam, a Slave — Gonfarone's — Maria's. 

Once upon a time an over-astute critic found 
grave fault with the title of a novel by Mr. 
William Dean Howells. There was to his mind 
at least an unfortunate suggestion in calling a 
book " The Coast of Bohemia," even though " Bo- 
hemia " was used in its figurative sense. What 
if the title had been derived from a line in Shake- 
speare? That did not alter the fact that ascribing 
a coast to Bohemia was like giving the Swiss 
Repubhc an Admiralty and alluding to Berne as 
a naval base. What would that censorious critic 
have to say of the association of Bohemia with 
stately Fifth Avenue? For to him and his kind 
it is not given to reahze that Bohemia is a state 
of mind, a period of ardour and exaltation, a 
reminiscence of youth rather than a material 
region. 

•■i-183-h 



FIFTH AVENUE 

The great stream has its tributaries. To Fifth 
Avenue belong the side streets that feed it and 
in turn draw from it flavour and inspiration. To 
it belong Washington Square, the south side as 
well as the north side, and the street beyond, that 
today is known as West Broadway, and yesterday 
was South Fifth Avenue, and before that, in the 
remote past, was Laurens Street; and the cross- 
ing thoroughfares that constituted the French 
Quarter of the late seventies and early eighties; 
and the northeastern part of Greenwich Village, 
that was once the " American Quarter," and is 
now masquerading as a super Monmartre, with its 
" Vermillion Hounds," and " Purple Pups," and 
" Pirates' Dens." 

Nor for the flavour of Bohemia is there actual 
need of leaving the Avenue itself. It was more 
than twenty years ago that the writer, turning 
into Fifth Avenue at Twenty-sixth Street of a 
sunshiny afternoon, was confronted with an ap- 
parition, or rather with apparitions, direct from 
the Latin Quarter of Paris. Three top-hatted 
young men were walking arm in arm. One, of 
imposing stature, wore conspicuously the type of 
side whiskers formerly known as " Dundrearys." 
The second, of medium height, was adorned by 
an aggressive beard. The third, small and slight, 
was smooth shaven. A similar trio was encoun- 
tered a dozen blocks farther up the Avenue, and, 

-^-184-^ 



TRAILS OF BOHEMIA 

in the neighbourhood of the Plaza, a third trio. 
It was a time when George Du Maurier's 
" Trilby " was in the full swing of its great popu- 
larity, when the name of the sinister Svengali 
was on every lip, and certain young eccentrics 
found huge dehght in attracting attention to them- 
selves by parading the Avenue attired as " Taffy," 
the " Laird," and " Little Billee." 

There is a stretch of the Avenue upon which 
the Fifth Avenue Association frowns; which the 
native American avoids; and which the old-time 
New Yorker regards with passionate regret as 
he recalls the departed glories of the Union Club 
and the jutting brown-stone stoops of yesterday. 
At the noon hour the sidewalks swarm with for- 
eign faces. There is shrill chatter in ahen tongues 
and the air is laden with strange odours. Even 
here Bohemia may be. Perhaps, toiling over a 
machine in one of the sweat-shops of the towering 
buildings a true poet may be coining his dreams 
and aspirations and heartaches into plaintive 
song; another, like the Sidney Rosenfeld of a 
score of years ago, who, over his work in the 
Ghetto of the lower East Side, asked and an- 
swered : 

" Why do I laugh ? Why do I weep ? 
I do not know; it is too deep." 

The attic, the studio, the restaurant, the cafe 
are the accepted symbols of Bohemia. What 

-J- 185 -H 



FIFTH AVENUE 

reader of Henri Murger's " Scenes de la Vie de 
Boheme " has ever forgotten the Cafe Momus, 
where the riotous behaviour of Marcel, Schaunard, 
Rodolphe, and Colline brought the proprietor to 
the verge of ruin? Who has not in his heart a 
tender spot for Terre's Tavern, in the Rue Neuve 
des Petits Champs, where the bouillebaisse came 
from — the bouillebaisse, of which some of the 
ingredients were " red peppers, garlic, saffron 
roach, and dace "? It is of no great importance 
whether the particular scene be on the '"rive 
gauche " of the River Seine, or in the labyrinth 
of narrow streets that make up the Soho district 
of London, or in rapidly shifting New York. All 
that is needed is youth, or unwilling middle age 
still playing at youth, and the atmosphere where 
artistic and literary aspirations are in the air, 
and poverty wearing a conspicuous stock, and the 
" glory that was Greece and the grandeur that 
was Rome," and the relative merits of Tennyson 
and Browning being talked over to the accom- 
paniment of knives and forks rattling against 
plates of spaghetti and the clinking of wine 
glasses. 

Years ago, to find the tangible New York 
Bohemia would have been a matter of crossing 
from the Avenue's southern extremity, and diving 
into the streets that lie to the south of Wash- 
ington Square. There was the old French Quar- 

-*-186-?- 



TRAILS OF BOHEMIA 

ter, and there foregathered the professional joke- 
makers and the machine poets who contributed to 
"Puck," and the "New York Ledger " when 
that periodical felt the guiding hand of Robert 
Bonner. Of that group Henry Cuyler Bunner 
was probably the most conspicuous. In his early 
days he was a twenty-four-hour Bohemian. In 
later life, when he had moved to the country, he 
remained a noon Bohemian. He was the prime 
spirit of the little Garibaldi in MacDougal Street 
of which James L. Ford wrote in " Bohemia 
Invaded." Not often did he stray over to Green- 
wich Village. He disliked what he called its 
bourgeois conservatism. 

For a period of years that section immediately 
to the south of the Square was the French Quarter, 
There were the peaceful artisans, and also there 
were political refugees of dangerous proclivities, 
men who had had a share in the blazing terrors 
of the Commune, and who, in some cases, had 
paid the price in years of imprisonment under the 
tropical sun of Cayenne. In all their wanderings 
they had carried the spirit of revolution with 
them and spouted death to despots over their 
glasses of absinthe in cellar cafes. William H. 
Rideing, in an article which was published in 
" Scribner's Magazine " for November, 1879, de- 
scribed these men as he had found them in the 
Taverne Alsacienne in Greene Street: "gathered 



FIFTH AVENUE 

around the tables absorbed in piquet, ecarte, or 
vingt-et-un . . . most of them without coats, 
the shabbiness of their other garments hghted up 
by a brilhant red bandanna kerchief or a crimson 
overshirt." Keen glances were shot at strangers, 
for the tavern had a certain clientele outside of 
which it had few customers and suspicion was rife 
at any invasion. " They are drinking wine, 
vermouth, and greenish opaline draughts of ab- 
sinthe. Staggering in unnerved and stupefied 
from the previous night's debauch, they show few 
signs of vitality until four or five glasses of the 
absinthe have been drunk, and then they awaken; 
their eyes brighten and their tongues are loosened 
— the routine of play, smoke, and alcohol is re- 
sumed." 

Pleasanter to recall are the sober, industrious 
men and women who were denizens of the neigh- 
bourhood in the years gone by — Mademoiselle 
Berthe and her little sisters, fabricating roses and 
violets out of muslin and wax in their attic apart- 
ment, Madame Lange, the hlanchisseuse., ironing 
in front of an open window, Triquet, the char- 
cutier, Roux, the bottler, Malvaison, the marchand 
de vin. Then there were others of the colony, 
higher in the social scale and less prosperous in 
their finances, the impecunious music-teachers and 
professors of languages who maintained themselves 
with a frosty air of shabby gentility on a very 

^-188-^ 



TRAILS OF BOHEMIA 

slender income, and the practitioners of literature 
and art who maintained themselves somehow on 
no income at all. For the leisure hours of these 
there were the innocent wine-shops of South Fifth 
Avenue, such as the Brasserie Pigault, which 
Bunner introduced to the readers of " The 
Midge " with a quaint conceit. The sign of the 
little cafe from without read: " A la Ville de 
Rouen. J. Pigault. Lager Beer. Fine 
Wines and Liqueurs." But its regular patrons 
knew it best from within, from the warm tables 
they liked to scan the letters backward, against the 
glass that protected them from the winter's night. 
It was a quaint haunt, where gathered Doctor 
Peters and Father Dube, and Parker Prout, the 
old artist who had failed in life because of too 
much talent, and M. Martin, and the venerable 
Potain, who had lost his mind after his wife's 
death, and Ovide Marie, the curly-haired mu- 
sician from Amity Street. 

But the prize exhibit, the piece de resistance, of 
that old Bohemia of the French Quarter to the 
south of Washington Square was the Restaurant 
du Grand Vatel in Bleecker Street. Not only 
the French strugglers, but American artists and 
authors in embryo used to dine there substantially 
and economically. As Mr. Rideing described it: 
" The floor is sanded, and the little tables are 
covered with oil-cloth, each having a pewter cruet 

^ 189 -H. 



FIFTH AVENUE 

in the centre. A placard flutters from the wall, 
announcing a grand festival, banquet, ball, and 
artistic tombola in celebration of the eighth anni- 
versary of the bloody revolution of March 18, 
1871, under the auspices of the ' Societe des Re- 
fugies de la Commune ' — ' Family tickets, twenty- 
five cents, hat-room checks, ten cents ' — from 
which we gather that the ' Restaurant du Grand 
Vatel ' has some queer patrons. The landlady 
sits behind a little desk in the corner. She is a 
woman of enormous girth, with short petticoats 
which reveal her thick, white woolen socks; her 
complexion is dark, her eyes are black and deep, 
and large golden rings dangle from her ears." 

The regular patrons begin to come in. The 
poor professor, after his unprofitable labours 
of the day, enters, and bows to the landlady, who 
is cordial or severe in her greeting according to 
the items on the little slate which records her 
accounts. He begins his meal. " He has soupe 
aux croutons, veau a la Marengo, pommes frites, 
a small portion of Gruyere, and a bottle of wine. 
He eats appreciatively after the manner of a hon 
xnvant; he uses his napkin gently and frequently; 
he glances blandly at the surroundings; watching 
him, you would suppose the viands were the 
choicest of the season, exquisitely prepared, while, 
in reality, they are poor and unsubstantial stuff, 
the refuse, perhaps, of better restaurants. Hav- 

-i- 190 -^ 



TRAILS OF BOHEMIA 

ing finished the edibles, he calls for a ' gloria,' 
that is, black coffee and cognac; and, sipping this, 
he communes with his fancies which come and 
vanish in the blue waves of cigarette smoke. His 
aspect bespeaks perfect complacency — Fate can- 
not harm me; I have dined today." 

To Mr. Rideing we are indebted for certain 
items indicating the very moderate scale of prices 
at the Restaurant du Grand Vatel. Outside there 
was a sign that read : " Tous les plats, eight cents ; 
plats extra varies; cafe superieur, three cents; 
cafe au lait, five cents." Here is a list of some of 
the dishes and their cost: Soup and a plate of 
beef and bread, ten cents; soupe aucc croutons, 
five cents; hoeuf, legumes, ten cents; veau a la 
Marengo, twelve cents; mouton a Ravigotte, ten 
cents ; ragout de mouton aucc pommes, eight cents ; 
boeuf braise aux oignons, ten cents; macaroni au 
gratin, six cents; celeri salade, six cents; compote 
de pommes, four cents ; fromage Neufchdtel, three 
cents ; Limhourg, four cents ; Gruyere, three cents ; 
bread, one cent. Thus, Mr. Rideing figured out, 
the professor's dinner, wine included, cost him the 
sum of forty cents, and with five cents added for 
a roll and a cup of coffee in the morning, his 
daily expenditure for food was less than half a 
dollar. 

The trails of Bohemia, or of pseudo-Bohemia, 
have never been so flaming and flagrant as they 

-<-191-?- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

are today. From that corner of the Avenue 
facing the Arch cross the Square diagonally to 
the head of Washington Place. A hundred yards 
to the west lies the Lane of the Mad Eccentrics. 
Two or three years ago the little triangle of a 
park known as Sheridan Square was surrounded 
by structures of red brick that dated from the 
days when Greenwich Village preserved some- 
thing of its proud individuality. Then a plan of 
transformation, involving a new avenue, cleared a 
wide path with the suddenness of a Kansas cy- 
clone. Bits of the picturesque past went tumbhng 
down before the onslaught of the demolishers. 
But in various nooks and corners that remained 
there sprang up bits of a picturesque although 
probably ephemeral present. 

It is easy to regard the Lane of the Mad Ec- 
centrics from the point of view of metropolitan 
sophistication; to dismiss the Vermilion Hound 
and the Hell Hole and the Pirate's Den and the 
Purple Pup and Polly's as clap-trap and tinsel 
designed for the mystification of yokels and social 
investigators from Long Island City. But it is 
impossible to deny that the crazy decorations have 
added a touch of real colour to what had been a 
drab corner of the town. The present writer has 
no intention of going into a detailed sketch of 
this fragment of Bohemia for the reason that 
Anna Alice Chapin discussed it so well, so buoy- 

-^-192-^ 



TRAILS OF BOHEMIA 

antly, and so sympathetically in her book on 
" Greenwich Village " published a year or so ago. 
A few lines from her description of the Pirate's 
Den will give the flavour of any one of the enter- 
prises that line the Lane of the Mad Eccentrics 
and are to be found, here and there, in the neigh- 
bouring streets. 

" It is a very real pirate's den, lighted only by 
candles. A coffin casts a shadow, and there is a 
regulation ' Jolly Roger,' a black flag ornamented 
with skull and crossbones. Grim? Surely, but 
even a healthy-minded child will play at gruesome 
and ghoulish games once in a while. 

" There is a Dead Man's Chest, too — and if 
you open it you will find a ladder leading down 
into the mysterious depths unknown. If you are 
very adventurous you will climb down and bump 
your head against the cellar ceihng and inspect 
what is going to be a subterranean grotto as soon 
as it can be fitted up. You climb down again and 
sit in the dim, smoky little room and look about 
you. It is the most perfect pirate's den you can 
imagine. On the walls hang huge casks and kegs 
and wine bottles in their straw covers — all the 
sign manuals of past and future orgies. Yet the 
' Pirate's Den ' is ' dry ' — straw-dry, brick-dry — 
as dry as the Sahara. If you want a ' drink ' the 
well-mannered ' cut-throat ' who serves you will 
give you a mighty mug of ginger-ale or sarsa- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

parilla. If you are a real Villager and can still 
play at being a real pirate you drink it without 
a smile, and solemnly consider it real red wine 
filched at the end of a cutlass from captured mer- 
chantmen on the high seas. On the big, dark 
centre table is carefully drawn the map of ' Treas- 
ure Island.* 

" The pirate who serves you (incidentally he 
writes poetry and helps to edit a magazine among 
other things) apologizes for the lack of a Steven- 
son parrot. ' A chap we know is going to bring 
back one from the South Sea Islands,' he de- 
clares seriously. * And we are going to teach it to 
say: " Pieces of eight! Pieces of eight! " ' " 

Then there is the Bohemian trail that leads 
along three sides of Washington Square. In the 
red Benedick much literary ink has been spilled. 
Until a few years ago there were several studios 
of artists along the south side of the Square. One 
of the artists, highly talented but quite mad, 
boasted for a brief period the possession of a 
slave — a huge Riff from the mountains of Morocco, 
acquired in some mysterious manner. All Bo- 
hemia flocked to the studio to witness the 
anachronism. For the benefit of those of New 
York who did not belong to Bohemia the artist 
delighted to promenade the streets followed at 
a respectful distance by his serf. Absolam — so 
the chattel was called — bearing his chains lightly, 

ri- 194 -f- 



TRAILS OF BOHEMIA 

considered his main duty to be to make love to 
the ladies of Bohemia. The artist's real troubles 
began when he undertook to rid himself of his 
slave. Absolam, waxing greasily fatter and fatter, 
basking in the warmth of delightful celebrity, re- 
fused to be lost. 

Long before the days of Absolam and his 
master there were painter men about the Square. 
Morse, according to Helen W. Henderson's " A 
Loiterer in New York," was the first artist to 
work there. He lived in the old New York 
University building, and when he was not before 
his easel, was experimenting with the telegraph. 
In that building also Draper wrote, and per- 
fected his invention of the daguerreotype, and 
Colt invented the revolver named after him. The 
old grey castellated structure, erected in 1837, 
stood on the east side of the Square until 
1894. 

Of a restaurant that played a part in one of 
his stories O. Henry wrote: "Formerly it was 
a resort of interesting Bohemians; but now only 
writers, painters, actors, and musicians go there." 
The same topsy-turvical irony might have been 
directed with equal happiness at the cafe of the 
Brevoort, or the Black Cat on West Broadway, 
or Gonfarone's at the corner of Eighth and Mac- 
Dougal Streets, or at old Maria's. Whatever 
else it may be Bohemia is a democracy, and re- 

-t-195-H- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

gardless of condition or occupation any one who 
so wishes may lay claim to and enjoy the privi- 
leges of immediate citizenship. We have become 
more tolerant with the years. He who prates of 
Philistines is himself a Phihstine. 

Formerly it was different. To escape the re- 
proach of the uplifted eyebrow, the quizzical look, 
the " que diahle allait il faire dans cette galere? " 
expression, it was necessary to be one of the Mr. 
Lutes or Miss Nedra Jennings Nuncheons, of 
Stephen French Whitman's " Predestined," who 
were regular habitues of " Benedetto's," under 
which name Gonfarone's was thinly disguised. 
Mr. Lute wrote a quatrain once every three 
months for the " Mauve Monthly," and Miss 
Nuncheon, tall and thin, with a mop of orange- 
coloured hair, contributed somewhere stories about 
the " smart set," " a society existing far off amid 
the glamour of opera-boxes, conservatories full 
of orchids, yachts like ocean steamships, mansions 
with marble stairways, Paris dresses by the gross, 
and hatfuls of diamonds, where the women were 
always discovered in boudoirs with a French maid 
named Fanchette in attendance, receiving bunches 
of long-stemmed roses from potential correspond- 
ents, while the men, all very tall and dark, pos- 
sessed of interesting pasts, were introduced before 
fireplaces in sumptuous bachelor apartments, the 
veins knotted on theu- temples, and their strong 

^-196-^ 



TRAILS OF BOHEMIA 

yet aristocratic fingers clutching a photograph or 
a scented note." 

Gonfarone's, the " Benedetto's " of the tale, is 
an old, converted dwelling house. There are the 
brown-stone steps, flanked by a pair of iron lan- 
terns, giving entrance to a narrow corridor; and, 
beyond, to the right, the dining room, extending 
through the house, linoleum underfoot, hat-racks 
and buffets of oak aligned against the brownish 
walls, and, everywhere, little tables, each covered 
with a scanty cloth, set close together. In the 
days when Felix Piers was in the habit of patron- 
izing the place there floated to his ears such 
phrases as "bad colour scheme!" " sophomoric 
treatment!" "miserable drawing!" "no atmos- 
phere!" But all that was years ago. When the 
writer dined there last, a month or so back, frag- 
ments of conversation caught from the clatter of 
the tongues of the Bohemians were: "Take it 
from me, kid!" "If old man Weinstein thinks 
he can put that over, he's got another guess 
coming!" "And then I give her the juice and 
we lost that super-six in the dust! " " Yes, Hug- 
gins has got some infield ! " 

Fifteen or twenty years ago the trail of Bo- 
hemia would have inevitably led to Maria's in 
West Twelfth Street. For there to be found, 
among others, was a certain Mickey Finn, as 
celebrated in his day and town as Aristide Bruant 

-?- 197 -f- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

was in a section of Paris of the nineties. About 
Finn gathered a group of newspaper men and 
journahsts. The distinction was that the news- 
paper man was one who earned his daily bread 
on Park Row, while the journalist had written a 
sketch for the New York " Sun " in 1878, and 
still carried and proudly exhibited the clipping. 
The original Maria, a large Italian cook who pre- 
sided autocratically over the kitchen of the base- 
ment restaurant, long since migrated somewhere 
to the north. She had exacted her share of the 
homage and the substance of her clients. After 
her departure there was still the attempt to keep 
up the ancient fire of witticism, and " la la la 
la! " was still uttered in what was thought to be 
the best Parisian accent, and the judgments of 
magazine editors, and the achievements of the 
painters who sold their portraits, and the writers 
whose novels crept into the lists of the " six best- 
sellers " continued to be damned in no uncertain 
tones. But the old spirit seems irrevocably gone. 



198 



CHAPTER XI 

The Slope of Murray HiU 

Stretches of the Avenue — Murray Hill: a Slope in Transi- 
tion — Early Astor Land Purchases — The Brunswick Build- 
ing — A Deserted Clubland — Churches of the Stretch — The 
Marble Collegiate — The " Little Church Around the Cor- 
ner " and its Story — When Grant's Funeral Procession 
Passed — The Waldorf and the Astoria — On the Hill in 
1776 — When the Red-Coats Loitered. 

After its half-mile journey between the great, 
square sordid mountains of stone and steel that 
lie to the north of Fourteenth Street, Fifth 
Avenue emerges into the sunshine of Madison 
Square. There it draws in deep breaths of pure 
ozone before resuming its way as a canyon at 
Twenty-sixth Street. Reverting to the past, from 
the Square to Thirty-first Street, the lane runs 
through what was the Caspar Samler farm. North 
of that were the twenty acres that John Thompson 
bought in 1799 for four hundred and eighty-two 
pounds and ten shillings. A Httle later, a more 
familiar name appeared on the maps. In 1827 
the Astor hand reached up to this then remote 
section, William B. Astor purchasing a half- 
interest, including Fifth Avenue from Thirty- 

-*-199-<- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

second to Thirty-fifth, for twenty thousand five 
hundred dollars. While other real-estate investors 
who considered themselves astute were planning 
for the future by gobbling up stretches of land 
along the shore of the East River the Astors were 
buying across what was primitively known as the 
backbone of the island. 

The sharp rise to what was the old summit and 
to the modified hill of the present does not begin 
until Thirty-third Street is reached. But there 
is perceptible a grade of a kind as soon as the 
Avenue leaves the northern line of the Square. 
Today it is a slope in transition. Here and 
there the change has been wrought. A modern 
structure reaches superciliously skyward. Beside 
it and below it the buildings of yesterday give the 
impression of feeling acutely conscious of their 
impending doom. They know. Their race is 
almost run. Tomorrow the old bricks will be 
tumbled down, the chutes will roar with their 
passing, and the air will be shrill with the steam 
drills and riveters ushering into the world the 
young giants that will take their places. At the 
northeast corner of Twenty-sixth Street, where 
the Avenue touches the Square, there is a vast 
edifice of surpassing ugliness. It is the Bruns- 
wick Building, on the site of the old Brunswick 
Hotel, once famous as the headquarters of the 
Coaching Club. At one end the principal estab- 

-?-200-?- 



THE SLOPE OF MURRAY HILL 

lishment of one of those firms that have given 
the term " grocer " a new meaning, at the other, 
a great book-shop of international reputation, and 
between, a booking office where the pictures and 
maps in the show windows stir the passer-by to 
disquieting dreams on streams of Canada and 
Maine in the summer, and of semi-tropical verdure 
in the winter. 

Now and again, on the way up the slope, there 
is a house, which, sturdily and stubbornly, has 
remained what it was built for, a place of resi- 
dence, despite the encroachments of commerce. 
But there are only four or five such. Until 
a few years ago this was a section of Clubland 
with the Reform, and the Knickerbocker, the 
latter at the Thirty-second Street corner, and 
the New York, just above the Thirty-fourth 
Street crossing. But the clubs, too, have moved 
on to the north, and the stretch of today is 
a riot without order or design, tailors, auto- 
mats, art shops, opticians, railway offices, 
steamship offices, florists, leather goods, cigars, 
Japanese gardens, Chinese gardens, toys, 
pianos, and even an antique shop or two, 
which have somehow found their way over 
from Fourth Avenue to the more aristocratic 
thoroughfare to the west, and where the visitor, 
like Raphael of Balzac's " Le Peau de Chagrin," 
may wander in imagination up and down count- 

-i- 201 -f- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

less galleries of the mighty past. At the Twenty- 
eighth Street corner there is a tall apartment 
house, retaining a sort of left-behind dignity; and 
there are two churches which belong to the Ave- 
nue's story, one of them on the Avenue itself, 
and the other in a side street, a stone's throw to 
the east. The first is the Marble Collegiate 
Church, which is at the northeast corner of 
Twenty-ninth Street, adjoining the Holland 
House. It is one of the six Collegiate churches 
that trace their origin to the first church organ- 
ized by the Dutch settlers in 1628. Its succession 
to the " church in the fort " is commemorated 
by a tablet, and in the yard is preserved the bell 
which originally hung in the North Church. 

Then, in East Twenty-ninth Street, is the ram- 
bling old Church of the Transfiguration, loved 
by all true New Yorkers irrespective of creed, 
under the name of the " Little Church Around 
the Corner." From it the actors Wallack, Booth, 
and Boucicault were buried, and in it is the 
memorial window to Edwin Booth, executed by 
John La Forge, and erected by the Players Club 
in 1898, in loving memory of the club's founder. 
Below the window is Booth's favourite quotation. 

" As one, in suffering all: 
That suffers nothing; 

A man that fortune's buffets and rewards 
Hast ta'en with equal thanks." 

—Hamlet, III., 2. 
-*-202-i- 



THE SLOPE OF MURRAY HILL 

Often as the story from which the church derived its 
familiar name has been told, no narrative dealing 
with New York would be quite complete without 
it. As it deals with Joseph Jefferson, let it be 
related in the words of the stage Rip Van Win- 
kle's Reminiscences. Mr. Jefferson was trying 
to arrange for the funeral, and in company of 
one of the dead actor's sons, was seeking a clergy- 
man to officiate. Here is his story: 

" On arriving at the house I explained to the 
reverend gentleman the nature of my visit, and 
arrangements were made for the time and place 
at which the funeral was to be held. Something, 
I can hardly say what, gave me the impression 
that I had best mention that Mr. Holland was 
an actor. I did so in a few words, and concluded 
by presuming that this would make no difference. 
I saw, however, by the restrained manner of the 
minister and an unmistakable change in the ex- 
pression of his face, that it would make, at least 
to him, a great deal of difference. After some 
hesitation he said he would be compelled, if Mr. 
Holland had been an actor, to decline holding the 
service at his church. 

" While his refusal to perform the funeral rites 
for my old friend would have shocked, under 
ordinary circumstances, the fact that it was made 
in the presence of the dead man's son was more 
painful than I can describe. I turned to look at 

-J- 203 ->- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

the youth and saw that his eyes were filled with 
tears. He stood as one dazed with a blow just 
realized; as if he felt the terrible injustice of a 
reproach upon the kind and loving father who 
had often kissed him in his sleep and had taken 
him upon his lap when a boy old enough to know 
the meaning of the words and told him to grow 
up to be an honest lad. I was hurt for my 
young friend and indignant with the man — too 
much so to reply, and as I rose to leave the room 
with a mortification that I cannot remember to 
have felt before or since, I paused at the door 
and said: *Well, sir, in this dilemma, is there 
no other church to which you can direct me from 
which my friend can be buried?' He replied 
that ' There was a little church around the corner ' 
where I might get it done — to which I answered, 
* Then if this be so, God bless the Little Church 
Around the Corner,' and so I left the house." 

A photograph from the collection of J. Clar- 
ence Davies, reproduced in the book issued by 
the Fifth Avenue Bank, shows Grant's funeral 
procession climbing the slope of Murray Hill, Au- 
gust 8, 1885, and passing the residences of John 
Jacob Astor and William B. Astor, on the sites of 
which is the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel of the pres- 
ent. The house of John Jacob was at Thirty- 
third Street, and that of William B. at Thirty- 
fourth Street, and there was a garden between 



THE SLOPE OF MURRAY HILL 

shut off from the Avenue by a ten-foot brick wall. 
The Waldorf, named after the little town of 
Waldorf, Germany, the ancestral home of the 
family, occupies the site of the John Jacob house, 
and was opened March 14, 1893. Four and a 
half years later, on November 1, 1897, the Astoria 
came formally into being, and the two hotels 
linked by the hyphen and merged under one 
management. That point where Fifth Avenue 
and Thirty-fourth Street cross is one of the great 
corners of New York. It is the one that made 
the profoundest impression on Arnold Bennett: 
" The pale-pillared, square structure of the 
Knickerbocker Trust against a background of the 
lofty red of the iEolian Building, and the great 
white store on the opposite pavement." A city 
of amazement has been left behind. Here we are 
at the threshold of still another city. It is dif- 
ferent at every hour of the day. But whether 
we see it in the sweet-scented dawn, or at high 
noon, or at the shopping hour, or later, when, to 
use Arnold Bennett's words, " the street lamps 
flicker into a steady, steely blue, and the windows 
of the hotels and restaurants throw a yellow 
radiance, and all the shops — especially the jew- 
ellers' shops — become enchanted treasure houses, 
whose interiors recede away behind their facades 
into infinity," it is ever the essence of our New 
York of Anno Domini 1918. 
, -*- 205 -h 



FIFTH AVENUE 

Then, in an instant, the Hill of today vanishes. 
The show windows of the great shops, gorgeous 
with display, the vast hotels, the clubs, the flutter- 
ing Starry Banners and Tricolours and Union 
Jacks, the stirring posters that bring the heart 
into the throat and send the hand down into the 
pocket for Liberty Loan or Red Cross, the line 
of creeping motor-cars on the asphalt, the swarm- 
ing sidewalks, swim away in a mist, and in their 
place there is rolling woodland, and a silver 
stream, and in the distance, a great white house. 
The years drop away. A boy of eight, curled 
up in a big chair, is dipping for the first time 
into the pages of his country's history. His face 
is flushed, his eyes are bright. With that vivid- 
ness that belongs to impressionable childhood, and 
to no other period of hfe he is seeing bits of the 
past that he will never forget. To the end of 
his days the rhetorical phrases will ring in his 
ears and the letters forming them will dance 
before his eyes. 

Boston Common. The line of defiant Minute 
Men drawn up. The curt order, " Disperse, ye 
Rebels ! " and the volley that followed so closely 
upon the words. This was the first blood shed in 
the American Revolution, The morning of an im- 
pending battle: the Continental leader exhorting 
his men. " There are the Red Coats! We must 
heat them today, or Molly Stark's a widow! " 

-e-206-J- 



THE SLOPE OF MURRAY HILL 

Again, the boy is being awakened from sleep in 
his bed in a quiet street of eighteenth-century 
Philadelphia. The voice of the watchman is cry- 
ing the hour and the thrilling tidings. " Two 
o'clock in the morning! All's well, and Corn- 
wallis has surrendered! " 

Here, on the Murray Hill of May, 1918, the 
man becomes the boy once more. Perhaps the 
suggestion comes from one of the women's faces 
that are looking straight at him, beseechingly and 
rebukingly, from the posters that line the Avenue; 
the face of " The Greatest Mother in the World," 
or that younger face beyond which the eye per- 
ceives dim outlines of marching men in khaki. 
The veil with the Red Cross is transformed into 
a coiffure of powdered hair, crowning the coun- 
tenance and figure of a grande dame of the 
eighteenth century. She is standing before the 
doorway of a great country house, smiling and 
beckoning welcome, and at the invitation officers 
on horseback halt the column of rapidly moving 
men. The soldiers break ranks and throw them- 
selves down in the shade of the trees. The officers 
advance bowing, and enter the house. The lady 
is smiling. 

The hostess with the powdered hair is Mrs. 
Mary Lindley Murray, wife of Robert Murray, 
British sympathizer and Quaker, and mother of 
Lindley Murray, the grammarian of later days; 



FIFTH AVENUE 

the house is the Murray Homestead, or the Manor 
of Incleberg, that in Revoluntionary times stood in 
the neighbourhood of what is now Park Avenue 
and Thirty-seventh Street; the Red Coats whose 
march westward she has interrupted are the 
troops of Lord Howe, in close pursuit of the 
badly demoralized soldiers of General Washing- 
ton; the day is one of September, 1776. 

A few weeks before the disastrous battle of 
Long Island had been fought. The Continental 
cause seemed at the point of immediate collapse. 
Day by day the list of deserters swelled. Wash- 
ington, leaving his campfires burning to lull the 
suspicions of the confident victors, had transported 
his men across the East River. On September 
15th the British began sending over boat-loads, 
landing them at Kip's Bay, where the Murray 
estate ended, now the easterly point of Thirty- 
fourth Street. In overwhelming numbers, fully 
equipped, and with elated morale, they began the 
pursuit of the shattered Americans. The detach- 
ment of Continentals left at Kip's Bay to oppose 
the landing had fled without firing a shot. Wash- 
ington, watching the debacle, had spurred his 
horse furiously forward, striking the men with the 
flat of his sword, lashing them with his tongue, 
in vain attempt to stop the panic. He was on 
the point of advancing alone when his bridle-rein 
was seized by a young officer. In an instant, 

-f- 208 -e- 



THE SLOPE OF MURRAY HILL 

again completely master of himself, he was build- 
ing new plans in the hopes of saving his army. 

The situation on Manhattan Island was this. 
To the south was General Knox, in command of 
a fort known as Bunker Hill on an eminence of 
what is now Grand Street. Near-by was General 
Israel Putnam — probably less known to pos- 
terity (above all, to youthful posterity) for his 
quahties as a commander than for the mad dash 
down " Put's Hill " at Greenwich by which he 
escaped the closely pursuing Red Coats. With 
Putnam was Alexander Hamilton, in charge of 
a battery. To the generals Washington sent word 
to retreat to the north in order to effect a junc- 
tion of forces. Knox withdrew men and cannon 
from Bunker Hill. The young man who guided 
Putnam's troops along obscure paths and by 
winding lanes close to the Hudson was named 
Aaron Burr. The busy Washington chanced to 
spend a night in the Murray home. If there had 
been any hesitation in Mrs. Murray's patriotism 
before, it vanished entirely under the grave charm 
of the Virginia leader. Henceforth she was heart 
and soul with the Continental cause. 

Two days later the British came. Mrs. Murray 
knew the danger that threatened the Americans. 
Her woman's wit and woman's charm must save 
the hour. So smiling she stood in the doorway, 
curtseying and inviting. The day was hot; the 

-J- 209-*- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

officers thirsty. To the minds of the British, con- 
temptuous of the prowess of the troops in ragged 
hlue and buff, what difference would an hour or 
two make when the coup de. grace was so easy to 
deliver? The lady was charming, grande dame, 
and her husband was known for devotion to King 
George. So they stayed and drank and drank 
again, while the American forces were meeting on 
the site of the present Longacre Square. A few 
days later came the Battle of Harlem Heights, 
where the Continentals gloriously redeemed them- 
selves. The wine cups of Mrs. Murray made 
possible the victory of the " Bloody Buckwheat 
Field." Had not a lady with powdered hair 
been standing before the door of her house on 
Murray Hill, the signers of the Declaration of 
Independence might, instead of hanging together, 
have hanged separately. 



210 



CHAPTER XII 

Confessions of an Exiled Bus 

After all, it was a hoary-haired scoundrel of a 
bus; a very reprobate of a bus; an envious, evil- 
thinking, ill-conditioned, flagrantly thieving, knav- 
ish blackguard of a bus. Under no circumstances 
am I proud of the acquaintance. But then, in 
extenuation, be it said that it was never anything 
but an acquaintance of Shadow-Land, conjured 
up, perhaps, by a material repast that had been 
palatable and indigestible. 

Have you read Alphonse Daudet's dehghtful 
" Tartarin of Tarascon"? Are you acquainted 
with the " baobab villa," and the elusive Monte- 
negrin Prince, who had spent three years in 
Tarascon, but who never went out, and who de- 
camped with Tartarin's well-filled wallet; and 
the jaundiced Costlecalde, and the embarrassingly 
affectionate camel, and the blind lion from the 
hide of which grew the great man's subsequent 
fame, and all the other whimsical creations of 
the novelist's pleasant fancy? The book is one 
of my favourite books, one of the tomes that are 
taken to bed to pave the way to restful, happy 

-«- 211 -i- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

slumber. Perhaps that night it had been the 
last volume to be tossed aside before turning out 
the light, for as I slept, to use the words of the 
tinker of Bedford, I dreamed a dream. 

There was a consciousness of being jolted about 
abominably in a ramshackle vehicle. The sur- 
roundings were vague, as they always are in 
dreams. Low hills and sandy waste and sparse 
shrubs. Where was it, the " Great Desert," or 
some stretch in South America or in Mexico? In 
my dream I was dozing, trying to forget the 
painful bumping and twisting. A familiar voice 
brought me to with a sudden start. 

" Say! Listen! Hey you! Wake up, can't 
you? " Far off as the voice seemed at first, there 
was a delicious, home-sickness-provoking, nasal 
twang to the accents. 

" Who are you? " I asked sleepily. 

"Who am I? Now that is a question. Don't 
you recognize me? Why I am one of the old 
Fifth Avenue buses that used to run from Wash- 
ington Square up to Fifty-ninth Street. That's 
who I am." 

"But why are you here?" I stammered. 
" What brought you to this strange corner of the 
world?" 

" Believe me," the spluttering voice replied, 
" I am not here of my own will. You can bet 
your tintype on that, Mr. Washington Arch, or 



CONFESSIONS OF AN EXILED BUS 

Mr. Hoffman House Bar, or Mr. Flatiron 
BuUding." 

" Your mode of address is somewhat obsolete," 
I ventured. " Changes have taken place." 

" Yes, I know. You want to be strictly up-to- 
date, like all the rest of the New Yorkers. As 
you say, changes have taken place. That is our 
unfortunate story. We were discarded, tossed 
aside, just as soon gs they found that they could 
replace us by those evil-smelling, noise-making, 
elongated, double-decked children of the devil. 
Without a word, without a regret, they packed 
us off. Some of us were sent to the end of Long 
Island, some to Florida to haul crackers and 
northern tourists, some, like myself, to the utter- 
most ends of the earth. But the worst fate was 
that of those who stayed. They were sold to a 
department store, and kept to run between its 
door and a Third Avenue El. station, to be packed 
to bursting with fat women and squalling children 
from the Bronx. Think of their degradation! 
Think of their feelings when they reflect upon the 
days of past glory! 

" It was hard," the confidences continued, " but 
I do not complain. We were growing old, no 
doubt of that. We were of yesterday, and you 
know the old saying of the ring that youth must 
be served. Even John L. learned that, and before 
him, Joe Coburn and Paddy Ryan. Then Jim 

-e-213-j- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

Corbett learned it too, and freckled " Bob " Fitz- 
simmons, and now there is a young fellow named 
Jim Jeffries who perhaps will find it out in his 
turn. You see, in my youth I was something 
of a patron of sport. I knew them all, and they 
are all down and out, and I am down and out." 
There was a plaintive whine in the spluttering, 
squeaky voice. 

"We knew that our hour was passing. We 
read the story in the averted eyes of those who 
in earlier days we had regarded as our fast 
friends, or we heard it in the outspoken, con- 
temptuous remarks of those who had no regard 
whatever for our feelings. To strangers, above 
all, were we objects of derision. Throaty, mid- 
western voices made disparaging comparison re- 
flecting, not only on us, but on our fair city. 
Visiting Englishmen surveyed us through mono- 
cles and talked of the buses of the Strand and 
Regent Street. There was a French artist, a 
Baron Somebody-or-other, who afterwards wi'ote 
a book called * New York as I Have Seen It.' 
He had married an American girl, the daughter 
of a comedian at whose clever whimsicalities my 
passengers used to laugh uproariously. I had 
carried him often — that actor, and knew him as 
one of the most genial and companionable of men. 
One day the Frenchman, accompanied by his 
father-in-law, stopped me at a street corner down 

-i- 214 -h 



CONFESSIONS OF AN EXILED BUS 

near Washington Square, climbed up beside my 
driver, and rode to the end of the route. Here, 
thought I, is where I get a httle appreciation. 
Here is a critic from the older civilization, a 
man with a proper reverence for the past, who can 
look beyond the freshness of varnish. I have a 
right to expect something in the nature of con- 
sideration from him. Bah! All he said was: 
' Among the splendid carriages and the high- 
priced automobiles, perhaps to prove that we are 
in a land of freedom, the black, dirty, wretched 
omnibuses ply from one end of the Avenue to 
the other.' Honest now, wouldn't it jar you? 

" I called you Mr. Washington Arch just now. 
I was wrong," the accents were now no longer 
plaintive, but raucous and sneering. If I had 
doubted before, there was now no questioning the 
old rascal's claim to recognition as a fellow New 
Yorker. " But I was wrong. You are Mr. Piker 
from Uptown Somewhere. Had you been Mr. 
Arch, you would have recognized me as soon as 
I did you. We real ones do not forget. But 
I have your number. Would you like me to tell 
you a few things? Oh, I have your dossier^ all 
right. Let me see. The first time I carried you 
you were an infant howling abominably. You 
were lifted in somewhere in the ' Fifties,' and 
three blocks farther down a fat old man got out, 
muttering, ' Why don't they keep those brats off 

-f- 215 -e- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

the stages ! ' The next time you were still howl- 
ing. You were about six, and you had been 
taken to the old Booth Theatre at the corner of 
Twenty-third Street and Sixth Avenue, and had 
seen ' Little Red Riding Hood,' and when the 
wolf said, ' All the better to eat you with, my 
dear,' you burst into a frightened bawl, and had 
to be hurried out. Soon after I saw you on a 
balcony near the Square watching a political pro- 
cession go by. Then there were a few years that 
I missed you, and then a period when I saw you 
often. I had grown rather to like you, until one 
Thanksgiving Day morning. You snubbed me 
direct. There were buses covered with coloured 
bunting in front of the Fifth Avenue Hotel. 
You climbed on one. Again you were howling, 
this time methodically, deliberately, in chorus with 
a number of other young lunatics. I tried my 
best to be friendly, but not a look would you 
give me. You were too busy shouting and wav- 
ing a flag. Say, do you want any more of those 
little personal reminiscences? " 

I did not. I mumbled a few words of lame 
apology, pleading the thoughtlessness of youth. 
The excuses were apparently taken in the proper 
spirit, for again the voice was tearful. 

" Ah, but those were the good old days ! Out 
here I love to think of them and to recall my 
youth. I am battered now, and my joints creak. 

-e-216-J- 



CONFESSIONS OF AN EXILED BUS 

But once I was aU fresh paint and varnish, one 
of the aristocrats of city travel. How I used 
to look down upon the bob-tailed cars at the 
cross-town streets. Besides I was not merely 
one of the splendid Old Guard, I was the. bus — 
the one of which they used to tell the famous 
story. Others may claim the distinction, but they 
are impostors, sir, rank impostors. I was the 
bus. What! You don't mean to say that you 
have never heard it?" 

Humbly I acknowledged my ignorance, and lis- 
tened to a tale that, I was assured, had once been 
told in every club corner and over every dinner 
table on the Avenue. 

" It was nine o'clock of a blustery March night. 
Mulhgan was not my driver on the trip, but 
Casey, who had been imbibing rather freely at 
the corner place of refreshment during the wait. 
Empty we left the starting point under the 'L. 
curve on South Fifth Avenue. Empty we crossed 
the Square. At the Eighth Street corner, in 
front of the Brevoort, we stopped. A gentleman 
and his wife entered. We proceeded. At Nine- 
teenth Street we were again hailed. Three young 
men were standing at the curb. The one in the 
middle had evidently been drinking, for his head 
was drooping, and he was leaning heavily upon 
his companions. He was helped in and placed 
far forward, just under the coin box. Casey 

-J- 217 H-. 



FIFTH AVENUE 

pulled the strap attached to his leg, closing the 
door, and we moved on, across Madison Square, 
past St. Leo's, up the slope of Murray Hill. At 
Thirty-seventh Street there was a tug at the 
strap, and one of the young men said a curt 
* good-night ' and alighted. We passed the old 
Reservoir, crossed Forty-second Street. Two 
blocks more and the second of the young men 
signalled. 'Good-night, Dick!' he said and was 
gone. As we resumed the journey the gentleman 
who with his wife had climbed aboard at Eighth 
Street noticed that the head of the third young 
man, the one apparently intoxicated, was sinking 
lower and lower. Thinking that he might be 
carried beyond his destination he stepped forward 
and touched his arm. ' We are passing Fifty- 
third Street,' he said. There was no response. 
He shook the shoulder and repeated the informa- 
tion. Suddenly he turned to his wife. ' We will 

get out,' he said quickly. ' But, George ' she 

began. ' We will get out,' he repeated, pulling 
the strap. As they stood under the lamp light at 
the corner the wife continued her protests. ' But 
there were four more blocks to go.' ' My dear,' 
said the husband, ' that young man's throat was 
cut from ear to ear! ' " 

" You are," I remarked crossly, " a most in- 
fernal old liar." 

" Maybe, maybe," was the wheezy response, 
-i- 218 -J- 




"the site of the old lenox library is now occupied 
by the house of mr. henry c. prick, one of the 
great show residences of the avenue and the 
city. a broad garden separates the house, 
which is eighteenth century english, from 

THE sidewalk" 



CONFESSIONS OF AN EXILED BUS 

"But I haven't said that it was true, have I? 
Nor again have I said that it wasn't. Strange 
things have happened on the Avenue. There 
have been nights of violence. Sometimes, on late 
trips, my nerves have jumped at the sound of 
some terrified cry. Often it has come from one 
of the most respectable of houses. Again, in 
broad daylight, I have seen startled faces pressed 
against upper windows. I have seen hands drop- 
ping notes to the pavement. Once in a while a 
passer-by has picked up one of those notes. But 
as a rule they were caught by the wind and 
whisked away. What was in those notes? That's 
what I want to know. Again, when it was dark, 
there has been the sound of running feet, and a 
panting man has jumped from the roadway to 
my rear step while we were in motion. The next 
morning there were stains on my cushions — ^the 
stains left by bloody hands. They never could 
wash them out. They never could wash them 
out." 

There was a lurch as a wheel bumped down 
into a hollow in the rough road, and the exile 
fell to groaning and blaspheming. 

"Ah, my rheumatic joints; my poor old bones! 
This chmate!" 

So the old Fifth Avenue bus complained of 
the rheumatism. I recalled that the diligence that 
carried M. Tartarin across the Algerian desert 



FIFTH AVENUE 

also gave vent to many " Ai's " about aching 
joints and sudden twinges. What creatures of 
imitation we are, to be sure! 

"But it is the loss of old friends that hurts 
the most," so the confidences went on. " There 
was Mulligan, for example, of whom I was speak- 
ing just now — he of the long coat and the dented 
brown derby hat. Far up, near the end of the 
line, there was an old one-story frame roadhouse, 
that had been there in my father's time, in my 
grandfather's time, in my great-grandfather's 
time. Mulligan knew it well, and many the time, 
when he came out of it, he was swaying shghtly, 
and had to pull himself up to the box by means 
of the seat rails. Then there were anxious mo- 
ments, as we raced over the cobble-stones, and 
my wheels scraped other wheels to the right and 
left. In those days there was a strap, one end of 
which was attached to the driver's boot, and the 
other end to the door at the rear. When a pas- 
senger wished to alight he pulled the strap and 
the driver released his hold. Sometimes the young 
bucks — we called them dudes in those days — 
inside had been dining well, and were hunting 
for mischief. Two or three of them would grab 
the strap and pull with all their strength. My 
sides are creaky now, but they ache with laughing 
when I recall how Mulligan used to swear. Some- 
times the strap gave and sometimes the driver' 

-i-220-?- 



CONFESSIONS OF AN EXILED BUS 

leg was twisted half off. Was that the origin 
of the expression ' pulling his leg ' ? I wonder ! 
The fare was dropped into the box up in front. 
At first the driver was the one who made the 
change. Later the change was handed out in 
sealed paper envelopes. Mulligan was of the early 
days. What became of him? Oh, he went into 
politics. 

*' I'll tell you what you can do for me," the 
exile went on. " Some day, when you are back 
in the old town just drop into the Hoffman House 
bar and take a drink for me, all the time looking 
up at the pictures of the lovely ladies about to go 
in bathing in a beautiful brook in the woods." 

" Stop ! " said I, sternly. The piratical old 
plagiarist of a vehicle was about to begin filching 
from another source. There had been a guilty 
squeak in the voice that had roused my suspicions. 
" No doubt," I said, with pointed sarcasm, 
" among the many passengers you carried at vari- 
ous times was the late Mr. Richard Harding 
Davis. He was a literary man of parts, and wrote, 
among other books, a charming little story called 
* The Exiles.' " 

"What! Is he d ? I mean I never heard 

of the gent," was the brazen response. " There 
was a Davis, now, a Sebastian Davis, I think the 
name was, in the hair-oil business, if I am not 
mistaken. A little fellow, with mutton-chop side 

-J- 221 -J- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

whiskers. But as I was saying, I don't know 
anything better than Fifth Avenue at Madison 
Square of a summer's night, with the hobos dozing 
already on the park benches, and people hanging 
round the entrance of the Fifth Avenue Hotel, 
and the men lined up three deep at the Hoffman 
bar, and the girls walking by on their way to 
dance the minuet at the Haymarket up at Sixth 
Avenue and Thirtieth Street. I said the minuet. 
Do you get me?" There was an evil chuckle. 
" Across the Square Diana is twinkling up there 
in the sky, and beneath, in the Garden, they are 
pulhng off a middle-weight bout to a decision. 
Just round the corner, in the Madison Square 
Theatre, you can hear the clapping. The play 
is Hoyt's 'A Trip to Chinatown.' Listen: 

" * Oh, the Bowery, the Bowery, 

They say such things and they do such things 
On the Bowery/ 

" Or maybe it's : 

" ' You will think she's going to faint, 
But she'll fool you, for she ain't; 
She has been there many times before.' " 

" I see," said I, for both the theft of ideas and 
the pretence of innocence were too flagrant; 
"that your memories are of what we lovingly 
called * the golden,' and detractors called the 
' yellow ' nineties. We were both young once." 

H- 222 -f- 



CONFESSIONS OF AN EXILED BUS 

But the assumption of friendliness seemed only 
to irritate. 

" The nineties ! Why, I was an old man in the 
nineties! An old, old man! I wasn't a youngster 
in the eighties, or the seventies, for that matter. 
There's another one of the old Avenue buses on 
this line. No. 27. He says he is older than I am. 
He's a liar. Sometimes I think I am the oldest 
bus in all the world, and that I ought to be 
enjoying myself in the Smithsonian, instead of 
dragging out my existence bumping over boulders 
and prairie grass. 

" Come to think of it," the old bus went on 
meditatively, " the Smithsonian does not appeal to 
me after all. I think that I would be better 
pleased in a corner of the Third Degree room 
down at Number 300 Mulberry Street, or in the 
Chamber of Horrors at the Eden Musee. For, 
as you may have noticed, I am partial to crime. 
It is the result of my bringing up. It is the 
excitement of my early days that I miss most 
now. When I first came out here it was with 
a feeling of pleased expectancy. I anticipated 
a daily hold-up. I had visions of stage robbers 
in cambric masks, and running gun fights, and 
horses in frightened flight, and my driver stricken 
to the heart and tumbling from his seat. But 
it is a degenerate and tame world out here. Give 
me little old New York." 

H-223-!- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

" But the statistics " I began. 

" You do not know one-quarter. The police do 
not know one-half. But I know. You have read 
what the papers have printed, or what some re- 
tired Inspector has seen fit to tell in his Mem- 
oirs. You did not pass, night after night, the 
sinister house of the woman whose open boast was 
that, if she wished to, she could take half the 
roofs oif the Avenue. You did not know how 
real that terrible threat was, for you never saw 
the cloaked men issuing from its doors bearing 
their ghastly burdens. You have heard of the 
Burdell murder but you never knew the real solu- 
tion. You have read of the Nathan murder at 
the corner of the Avenue and Twenty-third Street. 
But you did not hear, as I heard, that piercing 
wail, or see the shaking figure that climbed on 
my rear step at Twenty-fourth Street and rode 
twenty blocks northward. A man once wrote an 
Australian story called ' The Mystery of a Han- 
som Cab.' My life had not one mystery but a 
score of mysteries. You think you know some- 
thing of Fifth Avenue. What do you know of 
the killing the Girl in Green, or of Colt and the 
William Street printer, the Suicides of No. X 
Washington Square, North, or The Enigma of 
the Fifteenth Street House, or of The Case of 
Giuseppe and the Italian Ambassador, which was 
hushed up by orders from Washington and Rome, 

-J- 224 -J- 



CONFESSIONS OF AN EXILED BUS 

or The Affair of the Titled Sexton, or The 
Madison Square Tower Episode? " 

But I was growing weary of the voice of the 
old impostor. 

" Ever hear of Conan Doyle? " I asked. 

" Now come to think of it, a drummer from 
Altoona left a paper copy of one of his books 
the last trip." 



225 



CHAPTER XIII 

A Post-Knickerbocker Petronius 

A Post-Knickerbocker Petronius — The Early Life of Mr. 
Ward McAllister — A Discovery of Europe — A Glimpse of 
British , High Life — The Judgment of a Diplomat — The 
South and Newport — Organizing New York Society — The 
" Four Hundred " — Maxims of a Master and Maitre d'Hotel. 

He does not reign in Russia cold, 

Nor yet in far Cathay, 
But o'er this town he's come to hold 

An undisputed sway. 

When in their might the ladies rose, 

" To put the Despot down," 
As blandly as Ah Sin, he goes 

His way without a frown. 

Alas ! though he's but one alone, 

He's one too many still — 
He's fought the fight, he's held his own. 

And to the end he will. 
— From a Lady after the Ball of February 25, 1884. 

Mrs. Burton Harrison, in " Recollections, 
Grave and Gay," told of a visit made in 1892 as 
one of a party of invited guests travelling by 
special train to the newly built Four Seasons 
Hotel at Cumberland Gap, in Tennessee, where 
the directors of a new land company and health- 
resort scheme had arranged a week of sports and 
entertainments. About forty congenial persons 

ri- 226 -h. 



A POST-KNICKERBOCKER PETRONIUS 

from New York and Washington made the trip, 
the mountaineers and their famihes along the 
route assembhng at stations to see the notabihties 
among them. The chief attraction, Mrs. Har- 
rison recorded, seemed to be Ward McAHister, 
who had been expected, but did not go. At one 
station, James Brown Potter, engaged in taking 
a constitutional to remove train stiffness, was 
pointed out by another of the party to a group of 
staring natives as the famous arbiter of New 
York fashion. 

"I want to know!" said a gaunt mountain 
horseman. " Wal, I've rid fifteen miles a-purpus 
to see that dude McAlhster, and I don't begrutch 
it, not a mite." 

All over the land there were yokels and the 
spouses of yokels and even the children of yokels, 
moved by a like interest and curiosity; while rural 
visitors to New York, and also New Yorkers born 
for that matter — if such a person as a born New 
Yorker actually existed — craned their necks from 
the tops of the Fifth Avenue buses in the hope of 
catching a glimpse of the great man, who, for 
a brief, flitting moment was an institution of as 
much importance as the Obelisk or the Metro- 
politan Museum of Art. 

But so far as the great world beyond the Wee- 
hawken Hills went, Ward McAllister's was an 
ephemeral glory. It was a clear case of 



FIFTH AVENUE 

anachronism. He was born one hundred years 
too late, or two hundred years, or two thousand. 
His was the soul of the Roman Petronius, or of 
one of the Corinthian eccentrics, who strutted in 
St. James's Park or past Carlton House in the 
early days of the Regency, and gave colour to 
that otherwise grim England that was grappling 
for life with the Corsican; or of " King " Nash of 
Bath. It was the " King," perhaps, that he sug- 
gested most of all. But in the Carlton House 
circle he might have out-Brummelled Brummel, 
and supplanted that famous Beau as the object 
of the fat Prince's attentions and ingratitude. 
Indeed there was a flavour of Brummel's biting 
insolence in some of the sayings that were at- 
tributed to the New Yorker. For example, there 
was a well-known hterary woman of New York, 
who had in some way incurred the arbiter's august 
disapproval. 

"She write stories of New York society!" he 
said. " Why, I have seen her myself, buying her 
Madeira at Park & Tilford's in a demijohn." 

When Thackeray was contemplating writing 
" The Virginians," he desired information about 
the personality of Washington, and applied to the 
American historian Kennedy. Kennedy began to 
impart his knowledge in the manner that might 
have been expected from a historian when the 
Englishman interrupted rather testily, " No, no. 

-«-228-J- 



A POST-KNICKERBOCKER PETRONIUS 

That's not what I want. Tell me, was he a fussy- 
old gentleman in a wig, who spilled snuff down 
the front of his coat? " It was in some such 
spirit that I applied to that old friend of the 
fine Italian manner, and the profound personal 
and inherited knowledge of the ways and the men 
and women of New York. I did not, I explained, 
wish to be unkind, but the memory of that latter- 
day Petronius was one of the most mirth- 
provoking memories of my boyhood. Was he fair 
game for a chapter of a flippant nature? But 
why not? was the retort. He himself would have 
adored it. 

Fame came to him through the newspaper re- 
porter. It was a smaller New York, a more 
limited Fifth Avenue in those days, and Mrs. 
Astor ruled its society without any one to ques- 
tion her sovereignty. She was about to give a 
great ball, and Ward McAllister, as the self- 
appointed and generally accepted secretary of so- 
ciety, was in charge of the list of invitations. 

To the reporter sent to interview him Mr. 
McAllister explained that, owing to problems of 
space, only four hundred cards were to be sent 
out, commenting: "After all, there are only four 
hundred persons in New York who count in a 
social way." 

"And who are those four hundred persons?" 
asked the quick-witted reporter, 

-1-229-?- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

On that point Mr. McAllister was more reti- 
cent. But the reporter obtained the list of those 
who were to be invited to the ball, and the names 
were printed as those who constituted New York's 
" Four Hundred." 

" Society," said my friend sagely, " needs to 
be managed just as a circus is managed. Of 
good family, with an independent income large 
enough to make him free from the necessity of 
work, and small enough to keep him from the 
time-using diversions of extravagance, with a 
knowledge of wines, and a bent for selecting the 
proper kind of buttons for the coat in which to 
attend a cock-fight, he was the man for his circle 
and age. A Brummel? Hardly that. There 
was nothing of the ill-starred Beau in his appear- 
ance. His influence was good, as Brummel's was 
occasionally good. You recall the saying of the 
Duchess of York to the effect that it was Brum- 
mel's influence which more or less reformed the 
manners of the smart young men who were no- 
torious for their excesses, their self-assertiveness, 
their want of courtesy. He was more akin to the 
ill-favoured Richard Nash, whose wise autocracy 
helped so much in the redeeming of the city of 
Bath." 

After all, whether it was part pose, or whether 
the man was quite sincere in his professed belief 
in the profound importance of what most of the 

-J- 230-?- 



A POST-KNICKERBOCKER PETRONIUS 

world is inclined to regard as trivialities, he was 
always consistent. As a youth he went to live 
in the house of a relative, in Tenth Street, New 
York, when that neighbourhood retained a flavour 
of aristocracy. A legacy of one thousand dollars 
fell to him. It was his first legacy. A cannier 
soul would have made the money go a long way. 
He spent it all for the costume that he was to 
wear at the fancy dress ball that was to be given 
by Mrs. John C. Stevens at her residence in 
College Place. " I flattered myself that it was the 
handsomest and richest costume at the ball." A 
httle later, in 1850, he went to San Francisco, to 
join his father in the practice of law. It was in 
the first days of the gold rush, when the city was 
in the making, and fabulous prices were paid for 
the commodities of life. In the make-up of a 
man there had to be a certain amount of stern 
stuff if he was to survive in that struggle for 
existence. Young McAllister prospered, and in 
the course of time built himself a house. " My 
furniture," he recorded, " just from Paris, was 
acajou and white and blue horse-hair. My bed 
quilt cost me $250. It was a lovely Chinese floss 
silk shawl." His talents as a giver of dinners 
were in evidence at that early age, and his father 
made use of them in connection with the law busi- 
ness. There was a French chef^ at a salary of 
ten thousand dollars a year. High prices and 

-e- 231 -+• 



FIFTH AVENUE 

scarcity served only as spurs to the young 
Petronius. 

"Such dinners as I gave I have never seen 
surpassed anywhere," he complacently recorded 
in later years. Some one spoke to the elder Mc- 
Allister of the admirable manner in which his 
son kept house. " Yes," was the sapient retort. 
" He keeps everything but the Ten Command- 
ments." 

Two years of California, and then he returned 
East. At that period of his life the idea of the 
Diplomatic Service as a career appealed to him. 
Mr. Buchanan was going to England as Minister, 
and Ward McAllister applied to President Pierce 
for the post of Secretary of Legation. He was 
persona grata with Buchanan, he had the influence 
necessary to push his petition, and the matter 
seemed settled. But just then along came his 
father, who wanted to be made Circuit Judge of 
the United States for the State of California. Two 
appointments at the same time to one family were 
out of the question, so the young man stepped 
aside as became a dutiful son. But see Europe 
he would, and if he could not go in the Govern- 
ment's service and at the public expense as a 
dabbler with official sealing wax, he would go as 
a private citizen. The record he preserved of that 
journey gives a marvellous picture of the man. 

In London he met a Californian, in with all 
-e-232-«- 



A POST-KNICKERBOCKER PETRONIUS 

the sporting world, on intimate terms with the 
champion prize-fighter of England, the Queen's 
pages, and the Tattersalls crowd. Chaperoned by 
this curious countryman, McAllister's first intro- 
duction to London life took the form of a dinner 
at a great house in the suburbs. It was a strange 
house and a strange company, more in keeping 
with the eighteenth century than the middle of 
the nineteenth. The rat-pit, the drawing of the 
badger, the bloody battling of the bull terriers, 
the high betting, the Gargantuan eating and 
drinking and shouting, the smashing of glasses 
and plates, the imperturbable footmen in green 
and gold liveries calmly replacing in their chairs 
the guests overcome by strong potations — it was 
a picture for Hogarth's pencil at its best, or 
Gillray's at its craziest. 

The intimation is that, in the course of this and 
similar adventures, McAllister was defraying his 
own expenses and those of his Californian com- 
panion. Provided it was the kind of life he 
wanted to see, it was money well spent. 

Then he went off to Windsor, and there, at the 
village inn, dined with Her Majesty's chef and 
the keeper of the jewel-room. Again it was 
probably the visitor from across the seas who 
gave the dinner, as a result of which he was per- 
mitted to visit the royal kitchen, and see the 
roasts turning on the spits. 

-J- 233 -i- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

" I saw Prince Albert and the Prince of Wales 
that morning shooting pheasants alongside of the 
Windsor Long Walk, and stood within a few 
yards of them. I feel sure we ate, that day, the 
pheasants that had been shot by Prince Albert." 
Doesn't it read like a bit of Thackeray — say 
from the paper in *' The Book of Snobs " on 
" The Court Circular " with its references to the 
shooting methods of a certain German Prinoe- 
Consort ? 

**A tiny bit of orange peel. 
The butt of a cigar. 
Once trod on by a Princely heel, 
How beautiful they are!" 

Having exhausted England the young dis- 
coverer travelled to Paris and thence to Flor- 
ence. There are believed to be a few art galleries 
in Florence and some monuments of historical 
interest. But about these Lochinvar did not 
disturb his head greatly. Instead he discovered 
a cook — " I paid the fellow twenty-four Pauls 
a day " — whose manner of roasting a turkey was 
most extraordinary. He cultivated the Enghsh 
doctor of the city and through him procured invi- 
tations to the balls given by the Grand Duke of 
Tuscany. The King of Bavaria attended one of 
these balls, and something very terrible happened. 
It was lese-majeste in its most virulent form. 

The offender was an American girl who com- 
-f-234-»- 



A POST-KNICKERBOCKER PETRONIUS 

mitted the crime while being whirled about in 
McAlhster's arms. " I did it! I was determined 
to do it! As I passed the King I dug him in 
in the ribs with my elbow. Now I am satisfied." 
" I soon disposed of the young woman," recorded 
her partner of the dance, " and never ' attempted 
her ' again." 

There were other eccentric Americans at large 
in Europe in those days besides the fair belle of 
Stonington. One of them, in Rome, wore a 
decoration that excited the curiosity of his host, 
the Austrian Minister. His Excellency finally 
found the opportunity to refer to it questioningly, 
"Sir!" said the American, drawing himself up. 
" My country is a Republic. If it had been a 
Monarchy, I would have been the Duke of 
Pennsylvania. The order I wear is that of the 
Cincinnati." The Minister, deeply impressed, 
withdrew. In Rome McAlhster found that the 
American Minister was in the habit of inviting 
Italians to meet Italians, and Americans to meet 
Americans. When asked the reason, he replied: 
" I have the greatest admiration for my country- 
men: they are enterprising, money-getting, in 
fact, a wonderful nation, but there is not a gen- 
tleman among them." 

In reading the blasting comment I am moved 
to wonder what manner of man the Minister was 
who took no shame in giving expression to such 

-i~ 235 -H- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

an opinion of his brethren of the western world. 
" And then," Thackeray might have written, " I 
sink another shaft, and come upon another rich 
vein of Snob-ore. The Diplomatic Snob, etc." 
Yesterday Americans travelling in other lands 
had every reason to resent a type of representative 
that had been sent abroad to uphold the honour 
and dignity of our flag; the uncouth manners, 
the shirt sleeves, the narrow intolerance, that told 
all too plainly the story of party reward. Yet, 
somehow, I rather prefer that man, unpleasant 
as he was, and humiliating to patriotic pride as 
he was, to the dandy and ingrate of whom Mr. 
McAllister told. I like to think that, however 
Europeans may have laughed and wondered at 
the yokel out of place, for the sycophant denying 
his compatriots was reserved the bitterest of their 
contempt. 

From Italy McAlhster went to spend the 
summer at Baden-Baden. The Prince of Prussia, 
later the Emperor WiUiam, was there. It pained 
the young American to find that the royal visitor 
was no connoisseur, gulping his wine instead of 
sipping and lingering over it. But there is haste 
to express intense admiration. " His habit of 
walking two hours under the trees of the Allee 
Lichtenthal was also mine, and it was with 
pleasure I bowed most respectfully to him day 
by day." The final touch to the McAllister educa- 

-}-236-^ 



A POST-KNICKERBOCKER PETRONIUS 

tion came at Pau, where he passed the following 
winter, and the winter after. He ran down to 
Bordeaux, made friends with all the wine fra- 
ternity there, tasted and criticized, wormed himself 
into the good graces of the owners of the 
enormous Bordeaux caves, and learned there for 
the first time what claret was. " There I learned 
how to give dinners; to esteem and value the 
Coq de Bruyere of the Pyrenees, and the Pic 
de Mars." 

Thus equipped for the serious business of life as 
he conceived it, he returned home. He entertained 
old Commodore Vanderbilt at a dinner that caused 
the ex-Staten Island ferryman to remark: "My 
young friend, if you go on giving such dinners 
as these you need have no fear of planting your- 
self in this city." He was at first disappointed 
at the reception accorded him by his native city 
of Savannah. He had prided himself on giving 
that town the benefit of his European education. 
But there was a certain resentment at his attitude 
until " I took up the young fry, who let their 
elders very soon know that I had certainly learned 
something and that Mc's dinners were bound to 
be a feature of Savannah." Then came his coup. 
Certain noble lords were expected from Eng- 
land, the son of the Duke of Devonshire and the 
son of the Earl of Shaftesbury, and all wondered 
who would have the honour of entertaining them. 

-i-237-f- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

The British Consul counted on the distinction. 
" He was a great character there, giving the 
finest dinners, and being an authority on wine, 
i.e., Madeira, ' Her Majesty's Consul will have 
the honour.' I secretly smiled, as I knew they 
were coming to me, and I expected them the next 
day. This same good old Consul had ignored 
me, hearing that I had the audacity to give at 
my table filet de hoeuf aux truffes et champignons. 
I returned home feehng sure that these young 
noblemen would be but a few hours under my 
roof before Her Majesty's Consul would give me 
the honour of a visit." He was right. The 
strangers had not been settled an hour when the 
tactful Briton rushed up the front steps. Throw- 
ing his arms around McAllister's neck, he ex- 
claimed: "My dear boy, I was in love with your 
mother thirty years ago; you are her image; 
carry me to your noble guests." " Ever after," 
is the naive record of our hero, " I had the re- 
spect and esteem of this dear old man." 

Let us get back to our sheep. The narrative 
has been rambling too far from Fifth Avenue, and 
it is with the arbiter of the Avenue that we have 
to do. Behol(J him launched, laughed at perhaps, 
occasionally, but feared and courted. He was at 
the ball given to the Prince of Wales in the 
Academy of Music, being the first after the royal 
guest to take the floor for the waltz. 

-^- 238 -»-. 



A POST-KNICKERBOCKER PETRONIUS 

He devoted an entire day in railway travel in 
order to procure a dress-suit, as he called it, in 
which to appear at a dinner to two English lords. 
He began to arrange for cotillon dinners, figuring 
the cost, checking off the invitations, standing at 
the door of the salon, naming to each man the 
lady he was to take in. 

There was one point to which his subserviency 
to British visitors would not go. Gastronomically 
he was as sturdy a patriot as any farmer who 
blazed away at the Red Coats from behind the 
Lexington hedges. Stoutly he defended the " sad- 
dle " of venison instead of the " haunch." Our 
tenderloin steak was quite as good as the English 
rump. Of Madeira he once said, with the spirit 
of Nathan Hale, " You have none to liken unto 
ours." 

That Prince of Wales who afterwards became 
George the Fourth, in the vigour of his 
youth, and the prime force of his invention, 
invented a shoe-buckle. The crowning work 
in the life of Ward McAllister was probably 
the institution of the F.C.D.C.'s, abbreviation 
for the Family Circle Dancing Class. The Pa- 
triarch Balls, of which the first were given 
in the winters of 1872 and 1873, were growing 
too large and were being monopolized by 
the married women. The new association was 
for the jeune filler and was to be more limited 

-i- 239 H- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

and intimate. Its dances were held at Dod- 
worth's, later Delinonico's, and in the foyer of 
the Metropolitan Opera House. The arbiter paid 
the price of his greatness. " From the giving of 
the first to the time of my giving them up, I had 
no peace either at home or abroad. I was as- 
sailed on all sides, became in a sense a diplomat, 
committed myself to nothing, promised much and 
performed as little as possible. . . . 

" My mornings were given up to being inter- 
viewed of and about them; mothers would call at 
my house, entirely unknown to me, the sole words 
of introduction being, ' Kind sir, I have a daugh- 
ter.' These words were cabalistic; I would spring 
up, bow to the ground, and reply : ' My dear 
Madam, say no more, you have my sympathy; 
we are in accord; no introduction is necessary; 
you have a daughter and want her to go to the 
F.C.D.C.'s. I will do all in my power to do this 
for you; but my dear lady, please understand, 
that in all matters concerning these little dances 
I must consult the powers that be. I am their 
humble servant; I must take orders from them.' 
All of which was a figure of speech on my part." 
The arbiter would then diplomatically suggest the 
possibility of a friend of social influence, and 
make some allusion to family. That always 
started the fair visitor. The family always went 
back to King John and, in some instances, to 

-i-240-i- 



A POST-KNICKERBOCKER PETRONIUS 

William the Conqueror. " ' My dear Madam,' I 
would reply, ' does it not satisfy any one to come 
into existence with the birth of one's country? In 
my opinion, four generations of gentlemen make 
as good and true a gentleman as forty. I know 
my English brethren will not agree with me in 
this, but, in spite of them, it is my belief.' With 
disdain, my visitor would reply : ' You are easily 
satisfied, sir.' And so on, from day to day, these 
interviews would go on; all were Huguenots, 
Pilgrims, or Puritans. I would sometimes call 
one a Pilgrim instead of a Puritan, and by this 
would uncork the vials of wrath." 

To the credit of the post-Knickerbocker Pe- 
tronius it must be said that he was ever content 
with his lot. If there were poses to laugh at, 
there were qualities to respect. A meaner soul 
might have turned the peacock prestige to financial 
account. " Had I charged a fee for every con- 
sultation with anxious mothers on this subject " 
(that of introducing a young girl into New York 
society) " I would be a rich man." A Wall Street 
banker visiting him in his modest home in Twenty- 
first Street exclaimed against the surroundings, 
offering to buy a certain stock at the opening of 
the Board, and send the resulting profits in the 
afternoon of the same day. Commodore Vander- 
bilt, who apparently never forgot that first dinner, 
once advised: "Mac, sell everything you have 

-i- 241 -J- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

and put it in Harlem stock; it is now twenty-four; 
you will make more money than you know how 
to take care of." 

But steadfastly McAllister refused to be 
tempted. So long as his cottage was a " cottage 
of gentility," why try to augment his fortune? 
"A gentleman can afford to walk; he cannot 
afford to have a shabby equipage," he once said. 
That distinction which he felt to be his was not to 
be impaired by his trudging afoot. 

It is not in the pictures of his youth, winning 
his way into society to rule it; but come to ripe 
years, secure in his position, imparting his creed 
on points of social usage, with mellow dogmatism 
laying down the law in all matters of vintages 
and viands, that he is most impressive. " My 
dear sir, I do not argue, I inform." 

It was that spirit that led to the dictum that 
made him famous. " My dear boy, there are only 
four hundred persons in New York who really 
count socially." It was as if he had said: "De- 
cant all your clarets before serving them, even 
your vin ordinaire. If at a dinner you give both 
Burgundy and claret, give your finest claret with 
the roast, your Burgundy with the cheese. Stand 
up both wines the morning of the dinner, and 
in decanting, hold the decanter in your left hand, 
and let the wine first pour against the inside of 
the neck of the decanter, so as to break its fall." 

-J- 242 -?- 



A POST-KNICKERBOCKER PETRONIUS 

Doubtless, t'other side of Styx, his spirit has found 
congenial companions. I see his shade in dig- 
nified disputation with other shades. He argues 
with Brummel about the tying of a cravat, with 
Nash about a minuet, the proper composition of 
a sauce is the subject of a weighty dialogue with 
the great Vatel. 



243 



CHAPTER XIV 

The Crest of Murray Hill 

Stretches of the Avenue — The Crest of Murray Hill — The 
House of " Sarsaparilla " Townsend — A. T. Stewart's Italian 
Palace — The Knickerbocker Trust Company — The Coventry 
Waddell Mansion — A House at Thirty-ninth Street — The 
Present Union League — A Tavern of the Fifties — The 
" House of Mansions " — The Old Reservoir, and Egyptian 
Temple— The Crystal Palace— The Latting Tower— "Qual- 
ity Hill." 

Although the name it now bears and has borne 
for four or five years is the Columbia Trust Com- 
pany, the building at the northwest corner of 
Fifth Avenue and Thirty-fourth Street is hkely 
to be known and referred to as the Knickerbocker 
Trust for a long time to come. As such it was 
the storm centre of the great panic which shook 
the country in 1907, ruining many, shaking some 
of America's supposedly most solid fortunes, and 
involving a dramatic suicide. The story of the 
site goes back almost three-quarters of a century. 
There, at the beginning of the Civil War, was the 
residence of " Dr." Samuel P. Townsend. Orig- 
inally a contractor, he had " discovered " a sarsa- 
parilla, advertised it on an extensive scale, ac- 
quired a fortune and the nickname of " Sarsa- 

-e- 24)4! -J- 



THE CREST OF MURRAY HILL 

parilla " Townsend. His house, a four-story 
brown-stone, was one of the wonders of the town. 
For some reason he did not Hve in it long, selling 
it in 1862 to Dr. Gorham D. Abbott, an uncle 
of Dr. Lyman Abbott of the " Outlook." For 
a number of years Dr. Abbott, who had been the 
principal of the Spingler Institute on Union 
Square, conducted a school there. Then A. T. 
Stewart, the famous merchant, bought the site. 
He found brown-stone and left marble. " Sarsa- 
parilla " Townsend's pride and folly was tumbled 
to the ground, carted away, and in its place there 
went up the Italian palace that is still a familiar 
memory to most New Yorkers. It cost two mil- 
lion dollars. Stewart did not live long to enjoy 
it. But after his death in 1876, his widow occu- 
pied the palace until her death in 1886, when the 
property was leased to the Manhattan Club. 
There was a story to the effect that during the 
club's occupancy it was found necessary to make 
certain interior alterations. One of the committee 
in charge was an Irishman. He complained that 
the work was unduly expensive for the reason that 
" the woodwork was all marble." 

But before Stewart demolished and built, and 
before " Sarsaparilla " Townsend built what 
Stewart later demolished, there had been a famous 
mansion in this neighbourhood. Thackeray, in 
one of his letters to the Baxter family, alluded 

rJ- 245 -J- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

to the long journey he was about to undertake 
in order to travel from his hotel to a certain 
famous house up in the country at Fifth Avenue 
and Thirty-seventh Street. That was the Cov- 
entry Waddell house, on land where the Brick 
Presbyterian Church now stands. Waddell was 
a close friend of President Jackson, and his 
fortune sprang from the services he rendered as 
financial representative of the *' Old Hickory " 
Administration. In 1845, when he went " into 
the wilderness " to build, the Avenue, beyond 
Madison Square, was nothing but a country road 
lined with farms. It is told that when he was 
bargaining for the land, his wife sat under an 
apple-tree in a neighbouring orchard. Nine thou- 
sand one hundred and fifty dollars he paid for 
the tract, which ten years later brought eighty 
thousand dollars, and for part of which the Brick 
Church paid fifty-eight thousand dollars in 1856. 
The Fifth Avenue Bank monograph contains a 
print of the villa, as it was called, reproduced 
from " Putnam's Magazine." What the print 
apparently shows is the Thirty-seventh Street 
stretch, with the wicket fence near the corner, 
and the low brick wall extending westward be- 
yond. The villa was of yellowish grey stucco 
with brown-stone trim, Gothic in style, and had 
so many towers, oriels, and gables, that when 
Waddell's brother saw it and was asked what he 

-j-246-e- 



THE CREST OF MURRAY HILL 

would call it, replied, " Waddell's Caster; here is 
a mustard pot, there is a pepper bottle, and there 
is a vinegar cruet." There were a conservatory 
and a picture-gallery, and the house stood con- 
siderably above the Avenue level upon grounds 
that descended to the street by sloping grass 
banks. A winding staircase led from the broad 
marble hall to a tower from which there was a 
fine view of the rolling country, the rivers to the 
east and west, and the growing city far to the 
south. There were celebrities other than the 
author of " Vanity Fair " who sampled the quality 
of the Waddell hospitality. For ten years the 
Waddells lived there, entertaining magnificently. 
Then came the financial crash of 1857, Mr. Wad- 
dell was one of those whose fortunes tumbled with 
the market, and he was obliged to sacrifice his 
estate. The villa was torn down, and the grounds 
levelled. " I remember," " Fifth Avenue " quotes 
Mr. John D. Crimmins as saying, " very vividly 
the old Waddell mansion. I was taken into it by 
my father the day they began to dismantle it, 
and remember very distinctly the courteous 
manner in which we were received by Mrs. Wad- 
dell, and how she regretted the destruction of 
her home. At that time the Reservoir was an 
attraction for the view it furnished. There were 
no buildings high enough to interfere, and visitors 
could get a bird's-eye view of the entire city and 

-i- 247 ~h 



FIFTH AVENUE 

the Palisades. The neighbourhood at that time 
is well illustrated in the old New York print 
showing the Reservoir and the Crystal Palace, 
1855. There were no pretentious houses north 
of Forty-second Street. It was interesting to see 
the drovers — tall men, with staffs in their hands, 
herding eight, ten, or twenty cattle — driving the 
cattle to market, generally on Sunday, as Monday 
was market day." 

About the time that the Waddell villa was 
being pulled down there was going up, two blocks 
to the north, a New York residence that has en- 
dured to the present day. The original Wendell 
and the original Astor were partners in the fur 
trade, and at the time of the death of the late 
John Gottlieb Wendell his holdings in Manhattan 
real estate were second only to those of the Astors. 
There was a General David Wendell, known as 
" Fighting Dave," who fought in the War of the 
Revolution. The first Wendell and the first 
Astor, his partner, married sisters, and they 
bequeathed to their descendants the sound prin- 
ciple of buying land and buying beyond. The 
John Gottlieb Wendell of recent memory, a great- 
great-grandson of the founder of the family for- 
tune, was distinguished for his eccentricities. Al- 
though he collected his own rents, would never 
give more than three-year leases, and could not be 
persuaded to part with a foot of his land holdings, 

-J- 248 -J- 













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H 







THE CREST OF MURRAY HILL 

he was characterized as " one of the squarest land- 
lords in the city." In the old-fashioned brick and 
brown-stone house he lived in extreme simplicity. 
From the top of a passing bus may be seen the 
garden beyond the high board fence. Many 
covetous eyes of commerce have regarded it; many 
tempting offers have been made. But according 
to popular tradition Mr. Wendell clung to the 
garden because his sisters desired it as a place 
in which to exercise their dogs. Now, after the 
death of John Gottheb, the three elderly sisters 
still live in the house, in a state of the same old- 
time plainness. They, with a married sister, are 
the sole heirs of the eighty million dollars in 'New 
York real estate left by their brother. The house, 
a few years ago, was assessed at five thousand 
dollars, the site is valued at two million. 

Directly across the Avenue from the Wendell 
house is the Union League Club, on land that 
formerly was occupied by Dickel's Riding Acad- 
emy, fifty years ago the fashionable equestrian 
school of New York. The early story of the 
organization will be found in another chapter. 
The present home at the northeast corner of 
Thirty-ninth Street was built in 1879-1880 at a 
cost of four hundred thousand dollars. The build- 
ing is in Queen Anne style, of Baltimore pressed 
brick, with brown-stone trimmings, the interior 
decorations are the work of John La Farge, Louis 

-J- 249 -h 



FIFTH AVENUE 

Tiffany, and Franklin Smith, and the club's art 
collection includes Carpenter's Inauguration of 
Lincoln. The long room on the first floor facing 
Fifth Avenue, from the windows of which at any 
hour of the day may be seen comfortable-looking 
gentlemen blandly surveying the passing proces- 
sion, is the Reading Room, decorated in Pompeian 
style. 

On the corner above where the Union League 
now stands there was, in 1854, a small country 
tavern known as the Croton Cottage. It took its 
name from the Croton Reservoir, a block above, 
then on the other side of the Avenue. A yellow, 
wooden structure, with a veranda reached by deep 
stoops from the sidewalk, and surrounded by trees 
and shrubbery, it flourished by vending ice cream 
and other refreshment to those who came to view 
the city from the top of the Reservoir walls. 
During the Draft Riots in 1863 it was burned 
down, and Commodore Vanderbilt bought the site 
in 1866 for eighty thousand dollars, built a house, 
lived in it, and left it to his son, Frederick W. 
Vanderbilt. It is the Arnold, Constable site. On 
the same side of the Avenue as the Croton Cot- 
tage, in the block between Forty-first and Forty- 
second Street, was the Rutgers Female Cottage. 
This institution was first opened in 1839 on ground 
given it by WiUiam B. Crosby in Madison Street. 
The Madison Street property had been part of 

-i-250-f- 



THE CREST OF MURRAY HILL 

the estate of Colonel Henry Rutgers, of Revolu- 
tionary fame, after whom the college was named. 
In 1855 certain buildings known as " The House 
of Mansions," or " The Spanish Row," were 
erected opposite the Reservoir by George Hig- 
gins, who thought " that eleven buildings, uni- 
form in size, price, and amount of accommoda- 
tion, of durable fire-brick, and of a chosen cheer- 
ful tint of colour and variegated architecture," 
would suit the most fastidious home-seeker. In 
his prospectus to the public he informed that the 
view from the windows was unrivalled, as it com- 
manded the whole island and its surroundings. 
But either " The House of Mansions " had some 
defect, or the situation was still too remote from 
the city. The project was not a success, and in 
1860 the Rutgers Female College, incidentally 
the first institution for the higher education of 
young women in the city, moved from its down- 
town home and occupied the neglected buildings. 
Then there is the story of the great square 
opposite, running from Fifth to Sixth Avenues, 
between Fortieth and Forty-second Streets. The 
Public Library holds the eastern half of it now 
and Bryant Park the western. Like Washington 
Square and Madison Square the land once served 
as a burial place for the poor and the nameless 
dead. Between the years 1822 and 1825 that 
northern square was the Potter's Field. Then, 

-«-251-e- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

on October 14, 1842, the massive Reservoir, which 
remained to see almost the dawn of the twentieth 
century, was opened with impressive ceremonies. 
The distributing reservoir of the Croton Water 
system, it occupied more than four acres, and was 
divided into two basins by a partition wall. The 
enclosing walls, constructed of granite, were about 
forty-five feet high. This vast structure, resem- 
bling an Egyptian temple, contained twenty mil- 
lion gallons of water. The Reservoir had been 
there eleven years, when the Crystal Palace, 
modelled after the London Crystal Palace at 
Sydenham, was formally opened July 14, 1853, 
by President Franklin Pierce. Six hundred and 
fifty thousand dollars was the cost of the build- 
ing, which was shaped like a Greek cross, of glass 
and iron, with a graceful dome, arched naves, 
and broad aisles. Upon the completion of the 
Atlantic Cable in 1858 an ovation was given in 
the Palace to Cyrus W. Field. Beyond the 
Palace, to the north, was the Latting Tower, an 
observatory, three hundred and fifty feet high, an 
octagon seventy-five feet across the base, of tim- 
ber, braced with iron, and anchored at each of 
the eight angles with about forty tons of stone 
and timber. The tower was the design of Warren 
Latting, and cost one hundred thousand dollars. 
Immediately over the first story there was a re- 
freshment room, and above three view landings, 



THE CREST OF MURRAY HILL 

the highest being three hundred feet from the 
pavement. The proprietors were as sanguine as 
the promoters of the Crystal Palace and the 
builder of " The House of Mansions " had been. 
They took a ten-year lease of the ground and 
counted on reaping a fortune. But like the other 
ventures the Tower was a failure. It was sold 
under execution and destroyed by fire August 30, 
1856, twenty-five months before the burning of 
the Palace. In 1862 Union troops camped on 
the site of the latter building, and the ground 
became known in 1871 as Reservoir Park, which 
name was changed to Bryant Park in 1884!. 

Like other world-great cities, New York has 
many hearts. The spot that means the very 
centre of things varies according to mood, occu- 
pation, and manner of life. To high finance and 
those who play feverishly with it, the heart of the 
town is where Wall Street, running from Trinity 
Church down to the East River, is crossed by 
Nassau zigzagging into Broad. At high noon 
the colossal figure of Washington on the steps 
of the Sub-Treasury looks down on the centre 
of the earth. To the swarming thousands of the 
Ghetto, who seldom venture west of the Bowery, 
there is a point on the East Side that represents 
the pivot of things. There are descendants of 
the Knickerbockers who cling arrogantly to the 
corner facing the Washington Arch. Profound 

H- 253 -h 



FIFTH AVENUE 

is the belief of the pleasure seeker in the lights, 
signs, theatres, and lobster palaces of Longacre 
Square. To others nothing counts as the trees 
and fountains of Madison Square and graceful 
Diana and the great clock in the Metropolitan 
Tower count. But in these stirring days of the 
spring and early summer of 1918, for the throb 
of the universe climb Murray Hill to a point on 
the Fifth Avenue sidewalk opposite the stone 
lions that guard the entrance to the Public Li- 
brary. There, as nowhere else, has the quiet of 
other days been changed to the clamour of the 
present. To the passing thousands the uniforms 
of khaki or of navy blue and the blaring band 
are calling. " In this the vital hour let us show 
that the Spirit of '76 is not dead! Americans, 
to arms! " And yesterday it was " Quahty Hill," 
of which Mr. Clinton Scollard sang: 

" Quality Hill ! Lo ! It flourishes still, 
And who can deny that forever it will? 
A blending of breeding with puff and with plume; 
A strange sort of mixture of rick and mushroom. 
Some amble, some scramble, (some gamble), to fill 
The motley and medley of Quality Hill." 



254 



CHAPTER XV 



Giant Strides of Commerce 

Giant Strides of Commerce — The Reasoning of M. Honore 
de Balzac — The Aristocracy of Trade — The Story of a New 
York Shop — When Fifth Avenue Began to Rival Bond 
Street and the Rue de la Paix — Shopping in 19OI — Pub- 
lishing Houses at the Beginning of the Century — Prices of 
Real Estate — Some Great Houses of the Present. 



Once upon a time, so the story goes, a French 
publisher, planning an elaborate volume on the 
streets of Paris, went to Honore de Balzac, then 
at the height of his fame, to ask him to contribute 
the chapter on a particular thoroughfare — let us 
say, the Rue Une Telle, or the Avenue Quelque- 
Chose. The idea appealed to the fancy of the 
great man, and matters were going along swim- 
mingly, until it came to the point of settling upon 
a price to be paid the novelist for his labour. 
" And now, cher mattre, we must consider the 
painful triviality of emolument." Without hesita- 
tion Balzac mentioned a figure that was simply 
staggering. It was a minute or two before the as- 
tonished publisher could gather his wits together 
sufficiently to protest and bargain. But Balzac 
was not to be moved. He explained that the 
sum named was not merely for the work but also 

•+- 255 -i- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

for expenses that would be unavoidable in carry- 
ing on the work. " It is this way, cher Monsieur. 
To write about a street it is necessary to know 
it thoroughly. It is not enough to glance at the 
etalage, one must investigate the shop behind. 
Let us consider the street that you wish me to 
describe. As I recall it, first on the right is the 
establishment of B., the gunsmith. In studying 
his premises it will, of course, be necessary for 
me to purchase a rifle or a revolver and a box 
of cartridges. Next door to B., as you may 
remember, is the business of X., the perfumer. 
Luckily for you. Monsieur, a bottle of perfume 
is not expensive. But beyond that shop there is 
the one of Y., the furrier, and furs just now, as 
you doubtless know, are rather high. Of course, 
proceeding in my investigation, I shall be obliged 
to buy a ring at the jeweller's, a cliapeau de forme 
at the hatter's, a pair of boots at the shoe-maker's, 
and a waistcoat at least at the tailor's. In view 
of such a condition I protest that the price I 
name for writing the article is astonishingly rea- 
sonable." Needless to say, M. de Balzac did not 
write the paper desired. The pubhsher managed 
to find another scribe who finished the task credita- 
bly without purchasing so much as a sheet of 
paper. But imagine the expense account that 
would be presented by a writer engaged to de- 
scribe the stretch of shopping Fifth Avenue from 

-J- 256-+- 



GIANT STRIDES OF COMMERCE 

Thirty-fourth Street to Fiftieth who considered 
it necessary to follow the method suggested by the 
creator of the Comedie Humaine! 

Paraphrasing the saying of Dr. Ohver Wendell 
Holmes, three or four generations in the story of 
a New York store make an aristocrat of trade. 
There are names of commerce that stand out in 
the imagination of the New Yorkers like the names 
of great soldiers and statesmen. Sohd, imposing, 
facing the Avenue at a corner that represents 
land value that is computed by the square inch, 
is the structure of Brown-Smith. In some cases 
the passer-by will search in vain for any indication 
of the name — the information being deemed wholly 
superfluous. It matters not in the least whether 
the commodity upon which Brown-Smith has 
reared its history be hats, or groceries, or furs, 
or jewelry, or silverware, or boots, or men's 
furnishings. The story of the enterprise, its 
growth and its migrations, is, in epitome, the 
story of the city. 

The beginning of the tale, dealing with the 
first Brown-Smith, is the narrative of the In- 
dustrious Apprentice, coming to the growing 
town towards the close of the eighteenth century, 
a raw-boned country youth from New Hampshire 
or Vermont, finding after much tramping and 
many rebuffs employment which meant sleeping 
on a counter in the hours when he was not run- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

ning errands, sweeping out dusty corners, and 
polishing up the handle of the big front door, 
slowly, persistently winning his way to promo- 
tion and pay, perhaps, by way of romance, marry- 
ing his employer's daughter, eventually setting 
up for himself and emblazoning the name des- 
tined to be great over the entrance of a shop in 
Catherine or Cherry Street, and there to purvey 
to the residents of the near-by fashionable Frank- 
lin Square. Then the development of the hun- 
dred years. The first migration, suggested and 
urged by an ambitious and far-seeing son, to a 
corner on remote Grand Street. That was proba- 
bly the hardest and most radical step in all the 
history of the house, and there must have been 
strange doubts and misgivings in the soul of 
the founder, now grown grey, as he said good-bye 
to the famihar dweUings of Quality Row in 
Cherry Street and prepared to venture forth on 
unknown seas. Be sure that he took with him, 
as a sacred treasure, his first day-book, with its 
quaint entries of expenses and receipts. Very 
likely he did not long survive the change, and 
was never quite happy in it. 

Probably, if you happen to be a patron of the 
Brown-Smith establishment, and scrupulously 
leave its communications unopened in the letter- 
box at the club, you received, three or four years 
ago, a little book, commemorating the centenary 

-«-258-»- 



GIANT STRIDES OF COMMERCE 

of the house. They differ from one another 
merely in form and detail — these souvenir book- 
lets. In substance and flavour they are all pretty 
much the same. There are the old prints repro- 
duced from Valentine's Manual, the allusions to 
the horse-propelled ferry-boats to Brooklyn, to the 
advertisement that appeared in a City Directory 
of one of the years of the fifties, to the attack 
upon the establishment during the stirring times 
of the Draft Riots of the Civil War, to the fre- 
quent extensions of business and the migrations 
that carried the name from Grand Street over to 
Broadway and Prince Street, thence up the great 
street to a point near Twelfth, then to Union 
Square, to Madison Square, and finally, to the 
stately and spacious edifice of the present, far up 
the Avenue. And who will venture to predict 
how many years will pass before that structure, 
today regarded as the last cry in the matter of 
architecture and convenience, will be outgrown 
and inadequate, and its situation hopelessly far to 
the south? 

It was about 1901 that the movement began 
that was to transform Fifth Avenue from a resi- 
dential thoroughfare into a shopping street be- 
side which the vaunted glories of London's Bond 
Street and Paris's Rue de la Paix seem dim. In 
;the Knickerbocker days the important shops of 
the town lined lower Broadway and the adjacent 

-J- 259 -J- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

streets. Then it was to Grand Street that the 
ladies journeyed to barter and bargain for the 
latest fashions from the Paris whose styles were 
dominated by the Empress Eugenie. When 
Grand Street had been outgrown the shops 
moved northward to Fourteenth Street and Union 
Square. There are tens of thousands of New 
Yorkers whose childhood dates back to the early 
eighties who recall as one of the delights of the 
Yuletide season the visit to the revolving show in 
the window of old Macy's at the corner of Four- 
teenth Street and Sixth Avenue. For a decade 
or so Sixth Avenue was the shop paradise. Above 
Macy's were O'Neill's, and Simpson, Crawford 
and Simpson's, and Altman's, and Ehrich's, be- 
sides the countless emporiums of lesser magnitude. 
Macy's moved north to Greeley Square, and 
Gimbel's came to take its place on an adjoining 
corner, but the movement in bulk turned eastward 
at Twenty-third Street, lining the south side of 
that thoroughfare as far as Fifth Avenue. Some 
of the pioneers had ventured farther to the north, 
but Twenty-third Street was the centre as the 
nineteenth century came to a close. 

A writer in the " Century Magazine," describ- 
ing " Shopping in New York " in 1901, said that 
even then New York was known as a City of 
Shops just as Brooklyn was known as a City of 
Churches, and went on: "The district begins at 

-e-260-?- 










COMMERCE, WITH GIANT STRIDE, IS MARCHING UP THE 
STATELY AVENUE. THE STORY OF A BUSINESS HOUSE 
THAT BEGAN IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF CHERRY HILL, 
MIGRATED TO GRAND STREET, THENCE TO BROADWAY 
AND UNION SQUARE. AND AGAIN TO THE SLOPE OF 
MURRAY HILL, IS, IN EPITOME, THE STORY OF THE 
CITY ITSELF 



GIANT STRIDES OF COMMERCE 

Eighth Street, where the wholesale establishments 
end, and follows Broadway as far as Thirty- 
fourth Street. At Fourteenth Street and again 
at Twenty-third Street it diverges to the west 
until it strikes Sixth Avenue, including that part 
of Sixth Avenue only which lies between the two 
thoroughfares. From Broadway at Twenty-third 
Street, it makes another departure, running up 
Fifth Avenue and ending at Forty-seventh 
Street." When the department stores hned the 
south side of Twenty-third Street a number of 
the great book-shops were on the north side, near 
the old Fifth Avenue Hotel. Among such was 
the long-established Putnam, and adjoining that 
shop was the shop of the Buttons. Of the pub- 
lishing houses that carried in their traditions back 
to Knickerbocker, days Harper's was in the home 
of its beginnings and to which it still clings to the 
present time, the rambling structure hard by 
Franklin Square, while on Fifth Avenue, below 
Twenty-third, were the houses of D. Appleton 
and Company, Charles Scribner's Sons, and Dodd, 
Mead and Company, the last-named being the 
pioneer in the movement northward when it re- 
linquished its corner at the Avenue and Twenty- 
first Street to try the slope of Murray Hill at 
Thirty-fifth Street on land that is now occupied 
by the Bazaar of Best and Company. The inter- 
national house of Brentano, before it moved into 



FIFTH AVENUE 

its present headquarters in the Brunswick Build- 
ing at Twenty-seventh Street, was in Union 
Square. Today Brentano's is the largest shop 
of its kind in the city, while Scribner's, on the 
east side of the Avenue at Forty-eighth Street, 
has been called " the most beautiful bookstore in 
the world." 

In the new shopping district beginning at 
Thirty-fourth Street and running along the 
Avenue almost to the Plaza, like the Waldorf- 
Astoria Hotel, so the saying goes, exclusiveness 
for the masses, Altman was the pioneer. In view 
of what was then considered the prohibitively high 
price of real estate the projected invasion of the 
Avenue by the department stores was thought 
extremely hazardous. In 1901 the street still 
suggested the time when it had been lined by 
the dull, monotonous high stoops. Those old 
fronts had been knocked away, business had in- 
vaded many of the lower stories, but there still 
remained something of the former flavour. But 
property holders were awake to their opportuni- 
ties. Inside lots twenty-five by one hundred feet 
on the Avenue were held at one hundred and 
twenty-five thousand dollars, and corner lots cor- 
respondingly higher. Within two years these 
prices had doubled and trebled. Altman's, cov- 
ering an entire block, eight stories in height, with 
an addition that rises twelve stories, is a stately 

-J-262-J- 



GIANT STRIDES OF COMMERCE 

guardian of the corner at which the Avenue be- 
comes the Lane of magnificent commerce. The 
building, of French stone, was designed by Trow- 
bridge and Livingston. Directly across the 
street is an entrance to McCreery's, although that 
establishment faces on Thirty-fourth Street. 
Above McCreery's, opposite the corner where the 
New York Club once had its home, and on prop- 
erty part of which was formerly the house of 
the Engineers Club, is Best's, once Lilhputian 
in more than one sense, but no more so. There- 
after every block has its imposing monument to 
commerce. Silverware is represented by Gor- 
ham's at Thirty-sixth Street. Furs in magnificent 
display fill the windows of Gunther's Sons between 
Thirty-sixth and Thirty-seventh. At the south- 
east corner of Thirty-seventh Street is Tiffany's. 
Information as to the nature of the merchandise 
in which the establishment deals would be super- 
fluous, and the management is evidently of the 
opinion that the display in the windows tells the 
story to all the world, for the passer-by will look 
in vain for any lettering indicating the owner- 
ship. Instead, there is a bronze figure of Atlas, 
bearing a huge clock on his shoulders, adorning 
the facade of the edifice. The clock is the old 
Tiffany clock. Of American make, dating from 
1850, it was for many years in front of the 
original Tiffany Building at 550 Broadway, near 

-J- 263 ~h 



FIFTH AVENUE 

Prince Street. Then, in Union Square, it pre- 
sided over the fortunes of the house, again to 
be removed to serve as guardian of the destinies 
of the present structure, which is of marble, 
adapted from the Palazzo Grimani of Venice, of 
which Ruskin once wrote: " There is not an erring 
line, not a mistaken proportion throughout its 
noble front." On the corresponding corner above 
Tiffany's is Bonwit, Teller and Company, and 
directly facing the latter on the west side of the 
Avenue is Franklin Simon and Company. Con- 
spicuous on the next block are Lord and Taylor's, 
and Vantine's, the former Italian Renaissance, 
with vestibules finished in Bitticino marble and 
Travertine stone, ceilings of Guastavino tile, and 
aisles bordered with black Egyptian marble. To- 
day this establishment represents the last cry in 
construction and administration. Adjoining it to 
the north is Vantine's, its dimly lighted and in- 
cense-scented aisles running between counters cov- 
ered with rare and costly curios from the Orient. 
Northward to the Plaza commerce has moved 
with giant stride. The march might be studied 
and pictured block by block, corner by corner, 
and page after page blackened with detail and 
description. Any one of a dozen or a dozen dozen 
shops of the Avenue might be made the subject of 
a fat volume. For the present purpose it is 
enough to mention a few of them by name, and 



GIANT STRIDES OF COMMERCE 

in the order of march. At the south-east corner 
of Fortieth Street, on land that was formerly 
occupied by the residence of Frederick W. Van- 
derbilt, is the department store of Arnold, Con- 
stable and Company. It is the new home of a 
house that dates from 1827. To the west of the 
Avenue, on the north side of Forty-second Street, 
is Stern's. Other names that have a commercial 
significance, that are conspicuous in the stretch 
from the Public Library to the Plaza are W. and 
J. Sloane, the well-known rug house, on the east 
side of the Avenue, between Forty-sixth and 
Forty-seventh Streets ; Davis, Collamore and Com- 
pany (china and glass), Fifth Avenue and Forty- 
eighth Street; Duveen Brothers (antiques), 720 
Fifth Avenue; Fleischman and Thorley (flor- 
ists), respectively at 500 and 502 Fifth Avenue; 
the jewellers and silversmiths, Black, Starr, and 
Frost, 594 Fifth Avenue; Carlton and Company, 
634 Fifth Avenue; Kirkpatrick and Company, 
624 Fifth Avenue; and Gattle and Company, 
634 Fifth Avenue; and such emporiums designed 
to delight the hearts of extravagant women as 
J. M. Giddings and Company, L. P. Hollander 
and Company, and Alice Maynard, all on the 
Avenue in the neighbourhood of Forty-fifth 
Street. 



-265 



CHAPTER XVI 

Beyond Murray Hill 

Stretches o£ the Avenue — The Public Library — Temple 
Emanuel — The Draft Riots — The Coloured Orphan Asylum 
— The Willow Tree Inn — Remaining Residences — Clubs of 
the Section — As Seen by Arnold Bennett and Henry James — 
Three Churches and a Cathedral — The Elgin Botanical 
Gardens — Old Land Values. 

O beautiful, long, loved Avenue, 

So faithless to truth and yet so true. 

— Joaquin Miller. 

On the site of the old Croton Reservoir the cor- 
nerstone of the Public Library was laid November 
10, 1902, and the building opened to the pubhc May 
23, 1911. To it were carried the treasures of the 
Astor Library on Lafayette Place, and the Lenox 
Library at Fifth Avenue and Seventieth Street. 
Designed by Carrere and Hastings, the Library 
was built by the city at a cost of about nine 
million dollars. It is three hundred and ninety 
feet long and two hundred and seventy feet deep, 
the material is largely Vermont marble, and the 
style that of the modern renaissance. The lions 
that guard the main entrance from the Fifth 
Avenue side are the work of E. C. Potter. The 

H- 266 -J- 



BEYOND MURRAY HILL 

pediments at the ends of the front, the one at 
the north representing History and the one at 
the south Art, are by George Grey Barnard. The 
fountains are by Frederick MacMonnies. Above 
the main entrance are six figures by Paul Bart- 
lett, in order from south to north. Philosophy, 
Romance, Religion, Poetry, Drama, and History. 
Augustus St. Gaudens, who was to have directed 
the choice of the sculptors and supervised the 
work died before the Library was completed. 

Although consideration of the Public Library 
must necessarily be brief, a word should be said 
of the collection of paintings. The paintings 
comprise the gifts of three donors: James Lenox, 
whose collection of about fifty paintings was 
presented in 1877; the Robert Stuart Collection 
of about two hundred and fifty paintings, be- 
queathed by Mrs. Stuart in 1892; and some of 
John Jacob Astor's pictures, presented by Wil- 
liam Waldorf Astor in 1896. Paintings of im- 
portance are, in the main room, Munkacsy's Blind 
Milton Dictating " Paradise Lost " to his Daugh- 
ters, Sir Henry Raeburn's Portrait of Lady 
Belhaven, Copley's Portrait of Lady Frances 
Wentworth, Turner's Scene on the French Coast, 
Sir Joshua Reynolds's Mrs. Billington as Saint 
Cecilia, Gilbert Stuart's Washington, Horace 
Vernet's Siege of Saragossa, Raeburn's Portrait 
of Van Brugh Livingston; in the Stuart Room, 

r!- 267 -i- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

Boughton's Pilgrims Going to Church, Schreyer's 
The Attack, Inness's Hackensack Meadows, Sun- 
set, Troyon's Cow and Sheep, Detaille's Chasseur 
of the French Imperial Guard, Bougereau's The 
Secret, and Weir's View of the Highlands from 
West Point. 

About 1825 the land on the east side of Fifth 
Avenue from Forty-second to Forty-fourth 
Streets belonged to Isaac Burr, whose estate ex- 
tended along the old Middle Road. The present 
Seymour Building at the north-east corner of 
Forty-second Street is on the site formerly occu- 
pied by the home of Levi P. Morton, and before 
that by the Hamilton Hotel. 'Near the adjoining 
corner to the north is No. 511, the late residence 
of Mr. Richard T. Wilson, Jr. That number 
was once the home of " Boss " Tweed. Arrested 
for robbing the city, Tweed asked permission to 
return to his house for clothes. While policemen 
were guarding the Fifth Avenue entrance he 
escaped through a rear alley, made his way to 
his yacht in the East River, and sailed to Spain. 
Today unsightly advertising signs, thorns in the 
flesh of the Fifth Avenue Association, disfigure 
the north-west corner of Forty-second Street. 
Behind the signs there is an office building. Until 
a few years ago the Bristol Hotel stood here, 
and back in the days before the Civil War there 
was a small tavern on the site, while on the 

-i-268-i- 




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BEYOND MURRAY HILL 

adjoining lot was the garden of William H. Webb, 
the ship-builder. Webb's house was at 504 Fifth 
Avenue, and 506 was once the home of Russell 
Sage. 

The brown synagogue. Temple Emanuel, at 
the north-east corner of Forty-third Street, dates 
from 1868. The congregation was organized in 
1845, first holding services in the Grand Street 
Court Room, thence moving in 1850 to a re- 
modelled Unitarian Church in Chrystie Street, 
and again, in 1856, to a Baptist Church in Twelfth 
Street. The present structure, considered one 
of the finest examples of Saracenic architecture 
in the country, was designed by Leopold Eidlitz, 
and completed at a cost of six hundred thousand 
dollars. The materials are brown and yellow 
sandstone, with black and red tiles alternating on 
the roof. Within, near the entrance, are memorial 
tablets to Dr. Leo Merzbacher, first Rabbi, 1845- 
56, and to his successors. Dr. Samuel Adler (fa- 
ther of Felix Adler), 1857-74, and Dr. Gustav 
Gottheil, 1873-1903. The present Rabbi is the 
Rev. Joseph Silverman. 

Back from the Avenue, on the west side, be- 
tween Forty- third and Forty-fourth Streets, there 
once stood the Coloured Orphan Asylum. It was 
a square four-story building, occupying almost 
the entire block, and there was a garden in front 
extending to the road. The Asylum, which was 

-e- 269 -i- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

under the management of the Association for the 
Benefit of Coloured Orphans, organized in 1836 
by a number of prominent New York women, 
received from the city in 1842 a grant of twenty- 
two lots and erected the building in which the 
children were housed and taught trades. In the 
summer of 1863 there were between two hundred 
and two hundred and fifty children in the insti- 
tution. Then Congress passed the Conscription 
Law. In the evening papers of Saturday, July 
11th, the names of those drafted from New York 
were announced. Excitement seethed that night 
and all day Sunday. Monday the storm broke. 
The draft offices were surrounded by a mob, and 
as the first name was called a stone crashed 
through a window. That was the signal. The 
offices were rushed and the building soon in 
flames. The poHce were routed, and a squad of 
soldiers sent to their aid disarmed and badly 
beaten. Then the mob ranged, pillaging the house 
of William Turner on Lexington Avenue, firing 
the Bull's Head Hotel at Forty-fourth Street, 
and the Croton Cottage opposite the Reservoir, 
plundering the Provost Marshal's office at 1148 
Broadway, and destroying an arms factory at 
Seventh Avenue and Twenty-first Street. Then 
some one in the mob cried out that the war was 
being fought on account of the negroes and the 
rioters started in the direction of the Asylum. 

.-*- 270 H- 



BEYOND MURRAY HILL 

When they reached the spot they found an empty 
building, for the alarm had been given and the 
children taken to the Police Station and later 
conducted under guard to the Almshouse on 
Blackwell's Island. But the structure they de- 
stroyed, and when they came upon a coloured 
man in the neighbourhood they hanged him to 
the nearest tree or lamp-post. 

During the riot the draft-rioters made their 
headquarters at the Willow Tree Inn, which stood 
near the south-east corner of Fifth Avenue and 
Forty-fourth Street, and which at one time was 
run by Tom Hyer, of prize-ring fame. A photo- 
graph shows it as it was in 1880, with the tree 
from which it took its name in front, and the 
Henry W. Tyson Fifth Avenue Market adjoin- 
ing it. " Fifth Avenue " quotes from Mr. John 
T. Mills, Jr., whose father owned the cottage: 
" My mother planted the old willow tree," said 
Mr. Mills, " and I remember distinctly the Or- 
phan Asylum fire. The only reason our home 
was not destroyed was that father ran the Bull's 
Head stages which carried people downtown for 
three cents, and the ruffians did not care to destroy 
the means of transportation. There were many 
vacant lots in this section of Fifth Avenue at the 
time of the Civil War, and a small shanty 
below the Willow Cottage was the only building 
that stood between Madison Avenue and Fifth 

■^ 271 -i- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

Avenue. On the north-west corner of Fifth 
Avenue and Forty-fourth Street, then considered 
far north, stood a three-story brick building. The 
stockyards were between Fifth Avenue and 
Fourth Avenue from Forty-fourth to Forty-sixth 
Street, and Madison Avenue was not then cut 
through. The stockyards were divided into pens 
of fifty by one hundred feet, into which the cattle 
were driven from runs between the yards. On 
the east side of Fifth Avenue, just above Forty- 
second Street, stood four high brown-stone-front 
houses, the first to be built in this neighbourhood. 
In the rear of these were stables that had 
entrances on Fifth Avenue. " Fifth Avenue " 
points to the Willow Tree Inn as illustrating the 
appreciation of Fifth Avenue real estate. " In 
1853 this corner was the extreme south-west 
angle of the Fair and Lockwood farm, and was 
sold for eight thousand five hundred dollars. 
Here in 1905 a twelve-story office building was 
erected, replacing Tyson's meat market and the 
old Willow Tree Inn. The corner was then 
held at two million dollars. The property was 
bought in 1909 for one million nine hundred 
thousand dollars by the American Real Estate 
Company." 

At No. 7 West Forty-third Street is the home 
of the Century Association, at the corresponding 
number in Forty-fourth Street that of the St. 

-e- 272 -h 



BEYOND MURRAY HILL 

Nicholas Club, formed of descendants of residents, 
prior to 1785, of either the City or State of New 
York, and facing diagonally at Forty-fourth 
Street, are the establishments of Delmonico and 
Sherry. The site of the former restaurant was 
occupied from 1846 to 1865 by the Washington 
Hotel, otherwise known as " AUerton's," a low 
white frame building surrounded by a plot of 
grass. The rest of the block was a drove yard. 
Thomas Darling bought the entire block in 1836 
for eighty-eight thousand dollars. David Aller- 
ton, to whom he leased part of it, ran the Wash- 
ington Hotel during the Civil War. When the 
cattle-yards were removed to Fortieth Street and 
Eleventh Avenue the tavern's living was gone. 
John H. Sherwood, a prominent builder who con- 
tributed much towards developing upper Fifth 
Avenue as a residential section, bought the site 
and erected the Sherwood House. It was in the 
basement of the hotel that the Fifth Avenue Bank 
first opened for business. An interesting record 
of early rental values is found in the original 
minute book of the Bank. The Bank's offices in 
the basement of the Sherwood House were se- 
cured " at a rental of two thousand six hundred 
dollars per year, said rental to include the gas 
used and the heating of the rooms." There have 
been but four transfers of the corner upon which 
the Bank now stands at Fifth Avenue and Forty- 

-j-273-i- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

fourth Street since Peter Minuit, in 1626, bought 
the island from the Indians for a handful of 
trinkets. 

Despite the invasion of business there are many 
houses in this stretch of the Avenue that recall 
the tradition and flavour of the older New York. 
Between Forty-fifth and Forty-sixth, Nos. 555 
and 559, respectively, are the residences of Mrs. 
James R. Jessup and Mrs. John H. Hall. At 
the north-east corner of Forty-seventh Street is 
the home of Mrs. Finley J. Shepard, formerly 
Miss Helen Gould. Between Forty-seventh and 
Forty-eighth live Captain W. C. Beach (585), 
Mrs. James B. Haggin (587), Mrs. Robert W. 
Goelet (591), Mrs. Russell Sage (604), Mrs. 
Ogden Goelet (608), and Mrs. Daniel Butter- 
field (616). On the next block, Charles F. Hoff- 
man (620), and August Hecksher (622); and 
between Fifty-first and Fifty-second, Wilham B. 
Coster (641), WiUiam B. O. Field (645), and 
Robert Goelet (647). Then, on to the Plaza, 
comes the sweep of the houses of the Vanderbilts, 
and the residence of Lewis Stuyvesant Chanler 
(673), Samuel Untermeyer (675), F. Lewisohn 
(683), H. McK. Twombly (684), William Rocke- 
feller (689), Mrs. M. H. Dodge (691), W. Kirk- 
patrick Brice (693), Mrs. Benjamin B. Brewster 
(695), Adrian Iselin, Jr. (711), Mrs. N. W. 
Aldrich (721), John Markle (723), Mrs. Lewis 

-*-274-*- 




ENTRANCE TO THE PUBLIC LIBRARY. THE LIBRARY, 59O 
FEET LONG AND 270 FEET DEEP, WAS BUILT BY THE 
CITY AT A COST OF ABOUT NINE MILLION DOLLARS. 
THE MATERIAL IS LARGELY VERMONT MARBLE, AND 
THE STYLE THAT OF THE MODERN RENAISSANCE 



BEYOND MURRAY HILL 

T. Hoyt (726), H. E. Huntington (735), Mrs. 
Hermann Oelrichs (739), Joseph Guggenheim 
(741), and Wilham E. Isehn (745). 

Of this land the stretch from Forty-fifth Street 
to Forty-eighth on the east side of the Avenue 
was a part of the fifty-five-acre estate bought by 
Thomas Buchanan between 1803 and 1807 from 
the city, which was then disposing of its common 
land, for the sum of seven thousand five hundred 
and thirty-seven dollars. One hundred and eight 
years later " Fifth Avenue " appraised its value 
at twenty million dollars. For his country-seat 
Buchanan purchased a tract of ground along the 
East River front between Fifty-fourth and Fifty- 
seventh Streets. Buchanan died in 1815. A 
daughter, Almy, married Peter Goelet, and an- 
other daughter, Margaret, married Robert Ratzer 
Goelet, which accounts for the large Goelet hold- 
ings in this section. 

In this stretch of the Avenue and in the ad- 
jacent streets is the heart of the new Club- 
land. The Century in Forty-third and the St. 
Nicholas in Forty-fourth have been mentioned. 
At No. 10 West Forty-third Street is the home 
of the Columbia University Club. In Forty- 
fourth Street are the City Club {55 W.), the 
New York Yacht (37 W.), and the Harvard 
(27 W.). Until a few years ago the Yale Club 
was diagonally across the street from the Har- 

-*-275-i- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

vard Club, but now the alumni of "Old Eli" 
have a superb club-house of their own on Van- 
derbilt Avenue between Forty-fourth and Forty- 
fifth Streets, which they are occupying jointly 
with the alumni of Princeton for the duration of 
the war. Farther up the Avenue, on the north- 
east corner of Fifty-first Street, is the Union 
Club, which moved there after relinquishing the 
house it held so long at the corner of Twenty-first 
Street. Then, at the north-west corner of Fifty- 
fourth Street, is the University Club, to the mind 
of Mr. Arnold Bennett, the finest of all the fine 
buildings that line the Avenue. " The residential 
blocks to the north of Fifty-ninth Street," he 
wrote in the book that on this side of the North 
Atlantic was known as " Your United States," 
" fall short of their pretensions in beauty and 
interest. But except for the miserly splitting, 
here and there, in the older edifices, of an inade- 
quate ground floor into a mezzanine and a narrow 
box, there is nothing mean in the whole street 
from the Plaza to Washington Square. Much 
mediocre architecture, of course, but the general 
effect homogeneous and fine, and, above all, 
grandly generous." . . . The single shops, as 
well as the general stores and hotels on Fifth 
Avenue, are impressive in the lavish spaciousness 
of their disposition. Neither stores nor shops 
could have been conceived, or could be kept, by 

-<-276-?- 



BEYOND MURRAY HILL 

merchants without genuine imagination and 
faith." 

Bennett, though not in an unkindly spirit, was 
looking for aspects, not to praise, but to abuse. 
It was a far different neighbourhood forty-five 
years ago. Henry James, writing in 1873, in 
" The Impressions of a Cousin " (Tales of Three 
Cities), said: "How can I sketch Fifty-third 
Street? How can I even endure Fifty-third 
Street? When I turn into it from the Fifth 
Avenue the vista seems too hideous, the narrow, 
impersonal houses with the hard, dry tone of their 
brown-stone, a surface as uninteresting as that 
of sandpaper, their steep, stiff stoops, their lump- 
ish balustrades, porticos, and cornices. I have yet 
to perceive the dignity of Fifty-third Street." 

Besides being a stretch of clubs it is a stretch 
of churches. Shrinking back from the sidewalk 
on the east side of the Avenue between Forty- 
fifth and Forty-sixth Streets is the Church of 
the Heavenly Rest. So inconspicuous in appear- 
ance is it that once a passer-by commented: "I 
can perceive the Heavenly, but where is the 
Rest? " Two blocks to the north, at the corner 
of Forty-eighth, is the Collegiate Church of St. 
Nicholas, occupying the block between Fiftieth 
and Fifty-first is the Cathedral, and at Fifty-third 
is Saint Thomas's. Once the tract from Forty- 
seventh to Fifty-first Street was occupied by the 

-i-277-e- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

Elgin Botanical Gardens. The story of tht 
Gardens, says " Fifth Avenue," " begins in 1793 
in the garden of Professor Hamilton near Edin- 
burgh, where Dr. David Hosack, a young Amer- 
ican, who was studying with the professor, was 
much mortified by his ignorance of botany, with 
which subject the other guests were famihar. 
Hosack took up the study of botany so dihgently 
that in 1795 he was made professor of botany 
at Columbia College, and in 1797 held the chair 
of Materia Medica. He resigned to take a similar 
professorship in the College of Physicians and 
Surgeons, where he remained until 1826. For 
over twenty years he was one of the leading 
physicians of New York, bore a conspicuous part 
in all movements connected with art, drama, lit- 
erature, city or State affairs, and was frequently 
mentioned as being, with Clinton and Hobart, ' one 
of the tripods upon which the city stood.' He was 
one of the physicians who attended Alexander 
Hamilton after his fatal duel with Burr. While 
professor of botany at Columbia he endeavoured 
to interest the State in establishing a botanical 
exhibit for students of medicine, but failing to 
accomplish this he acquired from the cit}^ in 
1801, the plot mentioned above, for the purpose 
of establishing a botanical garden. In 1804 the 
Elgin Botanical Gardens were opened. By 1806 
two thousand species of plants with one spacious 

-i-278-J- 



BEYOND MURRAY HILL 

greenhouse and two hot houses, having a frontage 
of one hundred and eighty feet, occupied what 
today is one of the most valuable real estate sites 
in New York, the tract being now valued without 
buildings at over thirty million dollars. The 
financial burden of maintaining the garden was 
more than the doctor could carry, and he ap- 
pealed to the Legislature for support. Finally on 
March 12, 1810, a bill was passed authorizing the 
State, for the purpose of promoting medical 
science, to buy the garden. The doctor sold it 
for seventy-four thousand two hundred and sixty- 
eight dollars and seventy-five cents, which was 
twenty-eight thousand dollars less than he had 
spent on it. The State finally conveyed the 
grounds in 1814 to Columbia College, and this 
property, part of which the College still holds, 
has largely contributed to the wealth of the great 
University." 

But to revert to the churches. The Heavenly 
Rest is noted for its fine wood carvings and its 
stained glass windows. In the tower of the Col- 
legiate Church of St. Nicholas hangs a bell, cast 
in Amsterdam in 1731, which for years hung in 
the Middle Dutch Church in Nassau Street. 
While the British held New York the bell was 
taken down and secreted. When the Middle 
Dutch Church became the Post Office in 1845 the 
bell was removed, first to the Ninth Street Church, 

-^-279-^• 



FIFTH AVENUE 

then to the Lafayette Place Church, and later to 
its present location. The crocketed spire of the 
Church of St. Nicholas is two hundred and seventy 
feet high. Within the edifice is a tablet to the 
soldiers and sailors of the Revolution, placed by 
the Daughters of the Revolution, and oil por- 
traits of all the ministers of the church from 
Dominie Du Bois, who, in 1699, preached in the 
old Church in the Fort. 

Then St. Patrick's Cathedral. It was con- 
ceived, in 1850, by Bishop Hughes of the Dio- 
cese of New York, the cornerstone was laid in 
1858, and the Cathedral dedicated in 1879 by 
Cardinal McClosky. It was designed by James 
Renwick, the architect of Grace Church and St. 
Bartholomew's. The Cathedral is three hundred 
and thirty-two feet in length and one hundred 
and seventy-four feet in breadth, the spires rise 
three hundred and thirty feet above the ground, 
and the seating capacity of the edifice is two 
thousand five hundred. But its full capacity is 
eighteen thousand, and it is eleventh in point of 
size among the cathedrals of the world. Con- 
sidering St. Patrick's in its artistic aspect Miss 
Henderson, in " A Loiterer in New York," has 
said: "Renwick considered it his chief work; and 
the cathedral holds high rank as an example of 
the decorated, or geometric, style of Gothic archi- 
tecture that prevailed in Europe in the thirteenth 

-*-280-e- 










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BEYOND MURRAY HILL 

century, and of which the cathedrals of Rheims, 
Cologne, and Amiens are typical. . . . The 
modern French and Roman windows, which, to 
the eye of the later criticism, impair the beauty 
of the simple interior, were considered something 
most desirable in their day, and their completion 
was hurried in order that they might be shown 
at the Centennial Exhibition, of 1876, where they 
were a feature much admired. One of them — the 
window erected to St. Patrick — has at least an 
antiquarian interest. It was given by the archi- 
tect, and includes, in the lower section, a picture 
of Renwick presenting the plans of the Cathedral 
to Cardinal McClosky. The rose window is said 
to be a fac-simile of the rose window at 
Rheims, recently destroyed by German bombs; a 
provenance that may be the more securely claimed 
since the original has been immolated. As a 
matter of fact, it too bears the stigma of the 
Centennial period, of which it is a characteristic 
example. The only windows of aesthetic interest 
in the church are the recent lights in the am- 
bulatory, made by different firms in competition 
for the windows of the Lady Chapel, which is to 
be treated in the same rich manner." 

Massive and splendidly Gothic is St. Thomas's. 
The church dates from 1823. In 1867 the present 
site was secured, and the brown-stone edifice of 
the early seventies, designed by Richard Upjohn, 

-e-281-i- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

was for nearly two generations the ultra-fashion- 
able Episcopal church of the city. In 1905 it 
was destroyed by fire, and with it, in the flames, 
perished its artistic contents, among them the 
decorations made by John La Farge and Au- 
gustus Saint Gaudens. For six months the con- 
gregation was without a home. Then a wooden 
structure was erected and the new church was 
built without interfering with the services during 
the following years. Designed by Ralph Adams 
Cram, the present St. Thomas's is of white lime- 
stone from Kentucky. The left entrance, which 
is surmounted with a garland of Gothic foliage 
composed of orange blossoms, is the Bride's Door. 
Carved on each side of the niche above the key- 
stone is a " true-lover's-knot." A cynical ob- 
server (Rider's "New York City") comments: 
" Few visitors note the sly touch of irony which, 
by a few strokes of the chisel, has converted the 
lover's knot on the northerly side into an unmis- 
takable dollar sign." 

On the west side of the Avenue, running from 
Fifty-first to Fifty-second, are the Vanderbilt 
twin residences, the wonder of the town of a 
quarter of a century ago. They were built, in 
1882, by the late WiUiam H. Vanderbilt, the 
southerly for his own use, and the northerly one 
for his daughter, Mrs. Wilham D. Sloane. In 
1868 the land on which the brown-stone mansions 

-i- 282 -h 



BEYOND MURRAY HILL 

stand was occupied by one Isaiah Keyser, whose 
small three-story frame house was in the middle 
of a vegetable garden. That garden supplied 
the residents along lower Fifth Avenue, and its 
owner also dealt in ice and cattle. In the house 
which Mr. Vanderbilt erected for himself Henry 
C. Frick lived for a time. The Vanderbilt family 
spent millions of dollars in purchasing property 
to protect themselves against business encroach- 
ments. 

In former days the neighbourhood was given 
over largely to philanthropic and religious insti- 
tutions. The New York Institution for the In- 
struction of the Deaf and Dumb stood between 
Forty-eighth and Fiftieth Streets and Fourth 
and Fifth Avenues. That was from 1829 to 
1853. The building was one hundred and ten 
feet long, sixty feet wide, four stories high, with 
a beautiful colonnade fifty feet long in front. The 
grounds are described as " beautifully laid out 
in lawns and gardens, planted with trees and 
shrubbery." When the Asylum sold the property 
in 1853 it moved to Washington Heights. For 
many years the National Democratic Club and 
the Buckingham Hotel have stood on the land. 
The site of St. Patrick's, originally part of the 
Common Lands of the City, was sold in 1799 
for four hundred and five pounds and an annual 
quit rent of " four bushels of good merchantable 

-e- 283 -J- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

wheat, or the value thereof in gold or silver coin." 
Then it became the property of the Jesuit Fathers, 
and in 1814 the Trappist Monks conducted an 
orphan asylum there. Eventually it passed into 
the hands of the trustees of St. Peter's Church 
on Barclay Street, and St. Patrick's Cathedral 
on Mulberry Street, who, in 1842, conveyed about 
one hundred feet square on the north-east corner 
of Fifth Avenue and Fiftieth Street to the Church 
of St. John the Evangelist. The ground now 
occupied by the Union Club was once part of 
the site of the Roman Catholic Orphan Asylum. 



284 



CHAPTER XVII 

Approaching the Plaza 

Stretches of the Avenue — Approaching the Plaza — The Great 
Hotels — Old St. Luke's Hospital — " Marble Row " — Some 
Reminiscences of Mr. John D. Crimmins — Men and Manners 
of Sixty Years Ago — Early Transportation — The Saint 
Gaudens Sherman Group — The Cryptic Henry James — The 
Fountain of Abundance, 

One August day I sat beside 
A cafe window open wide. 
To let the shower-freshened air 
Blow in across the Plaza, where. 
In golden pomp against the dark 
Green, leafy background of the Park, 
St. Gaudens's hero, gaunt and grim. 
Rides on with Victory leading him. 

— Bliss Carman, On the Plaza. 

Approaching the Plaza, besides the churches, 
clubs, and the various houses associated with the 
name of Vanderbilt, there is conspicuous the 
cluster of great hotels. To sum up the nature 
of these hostelries briefly, imagine an English- 
man. " We now crossed their Thames over what 
would have been Westminster Bridge, I fancy, 
and were presently bowling through a sort of 
Battersea part of the city," was the way in which 
the British butler in Mr. Harry Leon Wilson's 
" Ruggles of Red Gap " described part of a 

rJ- 285 .-i- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

hazy, riotous ride about Paris. Later, the same 
worthy, come to our own New York, indicated 
the hotel of sojourn by the information that it 
overlooked " what I dare say in their simplicity 
they call their Hyde Park." Beneath the cari- 
cature there w^as a sound understanding of the 
workings of the British mind. So if an Enghsh- 
man contemplating a visit seeks advice in the 
matter of hotels there is the obvious short cut. 
Certain of the less pretentious places in the side 
streets and overlooking the minor parks may be 
described as " the sort of thing you find about 
Russell Square." The Waldorf-Astoria, the 
Knickerbocker, the McAlpin, or the Astor as 
" hke the Cecil, Savoy, or the Northumberland 
Avenue Hotels." The vast, expensive edifices of 
public welcome in the neighbourhood of the Plaza 
as " something rather on the order of Claridge's 
and the Carlton." 

These hotels are the St. Regis and the Gotham 
on opposite corners of the Avenue at Fifty-fifth 
Street, the Savoy and the Netherland on the east 
side of the Avenue at Fifty -ninth Street, and the 
huge new Plaza Hotel facing them from across 
the square. When the St. Regis was first opened 
popular fancy ascribed to it a scale of prices 
crippling to the average purse. The idea was 
the subject of derisive vaudeville ditties. "V^Tien 
a " Seeing New York " car approached the Fifty- 

-i-286-r 



APPROACHING THE PLAZA 

fifth Street corner the guide invariably took up his 
megaphone and called out, " Ladies and gentle- 
men! We are passing on the right the far-famed 
St. Regis Hotel! If you order beefsteak it will 
cost you five dollars. If you call for chicken they 
will look you up in Bradstreet before serving the 
order ! " 

St. Luke's Hospital, now crowning Morning- 
side Heights, opposite the Cathedral of St. John 
the Divine, was formerly on the land now occupied 
by the Gotham and the adjoining University Club. 
A photograph in the Collection of the Fifth 
Avenue Bank shows the old Hospital as it was 
in 1867. The point from which the picture was 
taken was in the middle of Fifty-fourth Street, 
east of the Avenue. At the north-east corner an 
iron rail fence separates the hospital grounds from 
the sidewalk, but the other three corners are vacant 
lots. To the west, on the south side of Fifty- 
fourth Street, a solitary house looms up. It is 
No. 4, now the residence of John D. Rockefeller, 
Sr. Near the Hospital, until 1861, was the Public 
Pound. The Hospital was opened May 13, 1858, 
with three " Sister Nurses " and nine patients. 
Its cost was two hundred and twenty-five thou- 
sand dollars. It was a red brick building, facing 
south, and consisted of a central edifice with 
towers. The cornerstone of the present St. Luke's 
was laid May 6, 1893. 

-J-287-J- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

" Marble Row " was the name given for years 
to the block on the east side of the Avenue be- 
tween Fifty-seventh and Fifty-eighth Streets. 
John Mason, at one time president of the Chemical 
National Bank, bought the land from the city in 
1825 for fifteen hundred dollars. Mason was 
another of the early New Yorkers who foresaw 
the future possibilities of the real estate of the 
island. Buying mostly from the Common Lands 
of the City, he purchased sixteen blocks from 
Park to Fifth Avenue, and from Fifty-fourth to 
Sixty-third Street. When he died, in 1839, he 
left a will cutting off with small annuities both 
his son James Mason, who had married Emma 
Wheatley, a member of the famous Stock Com- 
pany of the old Park Theatre, the favourite " Des- 
demona," "Julia," "Mrs. Heller" of her day; 
and his daughter Helen, who had also married 
against his wishes. The will was contested, and 
eventually the block between Fifty-seventh and 
Fifty-eighth Streets passed into the hands of 
Mrs. Mary Mason Jones. In 1871 she erected 
on the land houses of white marble in a style that 
was a radical departure from the accepted brown- 
stone type. At once they became known as the 
" Marble Row." Mrs. Mary Mason Jones, in 
her day a social leader, lived in the house at the 
Fifty-seventh Street corner. Later the dwelling 
was occupied by Mrs. Paran Stevens. 

-«-288-J- 



APPROACHING THE PLAZA 

To " Fifth Avenue " is owed the following 
description of the neighbourhood of the present 
Plaza in the middle of the last century. It is 
from the reminiscences of John D. Crimmins, 
who has been already quoted in the course of this 
book. Mr. Crimmins's father was a contractor 
and at one time in the employ of Thomas Addis 
Emmet, whose country-seat was on the Boston 
Post Road near Fifty-ninth Street. 

Says Mr. Crimmins: " In the immediate vicinity 
were the country-seats of other prominent New 
Yorkers, such as the Buchanans, who were the 
forebears of the Goelets, the Adriance, Jones, and 
Beekman families, the Schermerhorns, Hulls, 
Setons, Towles, Willets, Lenoxes, Delafields, 
Primes, Rhinelanders, Lefferts, Hobbs, Bikers, 
Lawrences, and others. A little farther to the 
north were the country-seats of the Goelets, 
Gracies, and the elder John Jacob Astor. With 
all these people, who were practically the com- 
mercial founders of our city, my father had an 
acquaintance. The wealthy merchants of New 
York at that period frequently invested their sur- 
plus in outlying property and left its care largely 
in the hands of my father, who opened up estates, 
as he did the Anson Phelps place in the vicinity 
of Thirtieth Street, which ran north and extended 
from the East River to Third Avenue. He also 
opened up the Cutting and other large estates. 

-«-289-i- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

When I was a lad, as I was the oldest son, my 
father would take me to the residences of these 
gentlemen, several of whom had their permanent 
homes on Fifth Avenue or in the vicinity. At 
that period, these wealthy citizens conducted much 
of their business at their homes. James Lenox 
had his office in the basement of his house at 
Fifth Avenue and Twelfth Street. R. L. Stuart 
attended to much of his business at his residence. 
Twentieth Street and Fifth Avenue, and the same 
may be said of the Costers, Moses Taylor, and 
others. These men had no hesitation in receiving 
in their homes after business hours the people 
whom they employed. I remember distinctly 
before gas was generally introduced how very 
economical in its use those who had it were. In 
the absence of the butler the gentleman of the 
house would often walk to the door with his 
visitor and then lower the gas. The estates of 
many of these wealthj^ merchants were rented to 
market gardeners. And it was not an unusual 
sight to see a merchant drive in his carriage to 
the vegetable garden, select his vegetables, and 
carry them to his table, showing the economy and 
simple manners of the people of that older day 
as compared with our present extravagance. 

" After the Board of Aldermen had acceded 
to the petition of the residents of Fifth Avenue 
for permission to enclose a part of the roadway in 

-J- 290-?- 



APPROACHING THE PLAZA 

a closed yard or area, it was not an uncommon 
sight to see many of the older men standing at 
theu' gates, in high stocks, white cravats, cutaway 
coats with brass buttons, greeting their neigh- 
bours as they passed along the Avenue — a custom 
which survived to about 1870, when the white 
cravat, too, passed into history. The improve- 
ments on Fifth Avenue, north of Thirty-fourth 
Street, began with the erection of the Townsend 
house, which was a feature of the city and shown 
to visitors. The location was the foot of a high 
hill. 

" On the corner of Fifth Avenue and Fiftieth 
Street, where the Cathedral now stands, stood the 
frame church, thirty by seventy feet, in which I 
was baptized in May, 1844. A path and a road 
led to the Post Road which ran east of the church 
and bordered the Potter's Field. To the north 
was the Orphan Asylum, and farther on was 
another cattle yard, Waltemeir's, a family well 
known to cattle men. From Fiftieth Street to 
St. Luke's Hospital at Fifty-fourth Street there 
were a few frame houses, and the ground extend- 
ing to Sixth Avenue was used for market gardens. 
Old maps of New York show the lanes crossing 
this section at the time, much like the country 
roads we see today thirty or forty miles distant 
from the city. Walls ran along these roads with 
an occasional house with its gable of the old Dutch 



FIFTH AVENUE 

type. Mr. Keyser, who dealt in ice gathered from 
ponds, occupied the site of the present Vander- 
bilt houses. Fifty-first to Fifty-second Street. 
The Decker house of Dutch architecture occupied 
the block between Fourth and Fifth Avenues, 
Fifty-sixth to Fifty-seventh Street. 

" Peter and Robert Goelet I recall very well. 
Those who called on Peter Goelet would find him 
in a jumper, bluish in colour, such as we see 
mechanics wear, with pockets in front. He loved 
to be occupied and always had a rule and other 
articles in his pockets. His brother, Robert, was 
the grandfather of the present Goelets. Peter 
was the elder and a bachelor. They accompanied 
each other on walks, Peter, the more active of 
the two, in front, and Robert a pace behind. They 
dealt directly with their tenants and those whom 
they employed in taking care of their properties. 
I can recall them coming on foot to my father to 
have him repair a sidewalk or fence. I doubt if 
these men in their day, except for ordinary living 
expenses, spent five thousand dollars a year. They 
were simple in their manners and tastes. 

" The older generation was noted for industry, 
thrift, and economy. An old merchant, an ex- 
ecutor of the Burr estate which owned property 
opposite the new Public Librarj^ once stated that 
no man who had a million dollars invested, could 
spend his income in a year. Money at that time 

^-292-^ 



APPROACHING THE PLAZA 

brought seven per cent. The contents of an office 
did not exceed in cost fifty dollars, a pine desk 
and table, and a few chairs. There were no 
stenographers and typewriters were unknown. 

" Transportation was principally by stage. 
There were car hnes on Second, Third, Sixth, and 
Eighth Avenues. The men who kept carriages 
were few and they generally lived in Harlem or 
Manhattanville. Occasionally smart four-in-hands 
were seen, and I recall Madame Jumel . driving 
to town and how we boys used to run to the side 
of the road to see her pass. Many business 
men would go to the city driving a rockaway 
with a single horse. Few of the streets were 
paved, and there were but two classes of pave- 
ments, macadam and cobblestones. Where streets 
were not paved the sidewalks were in bad condi- 
tion. In some places the high banks of earth on 
either side of the street were washed down by 
heavy rains and deposited on the sidewalks. 

" Oil lamps were in general use as street lights, 
and the light was easily blown out by the wind. 
The lamplighter was usually a tall man, a char- 
acter, and his position was considered an impor- 
tant one. Fifth Avenue north of Fifty-ninth 
Street remained undeveloped for years, and it was 
not until sometime in the seventies that my father 
and I finished grading upper Fifth Avenue. 
Sixty years ago on both sides were stone walls 

-<-293-+- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

where there were deep depressions. There was 
no traffic except drovers coming down to market 
with cattle. There were but two main thorough- 
fares, Boston Post Road on the east side, and 
Bloomingdale Road on the west side. From the 
Boston Post Road long lanes led to the residences 
of gentlemen who had country-seats on the East 
River, and similar lanes led from the old Bloom- 
ingdale Road to the country-seats on the Hudson 
River. The sites of the Plaza, the Savoy, and 
the Netherland Hotels were rocky knolls. A 
brook which came down Fifty -ninth Street formed 
several shallow pools which remained for a num- 
ber of years after the Civil War." 

Whether or not Saint Gaudens was right in 
his contention that the proper place for his 
equestrian statue of General Sherman was on the 
Riverside Drive by Grant's Tomb, without that 
gilded bronze figure of heroic size and the Winged 
Victory leading before, the Plaza would not be 
quite the Plaza. Obscured as it is in these days 
by the vast scaffolding, there is no true son of 
Manhattan who passes the corner on his way up 
the Avenue, or enters Central Park, who does 
not turn to look at the chief ornament of the broad 
square. The statue was made several years after 
Sherman's death, and the sculptor laboured on it 
for six years, from the time when he began the 
work in Paris, to its final unveiling, on Memorial 

-*-294-i- 



APPROACHING THE PLAZA 

Day, 1903. Of the statue and its surroundings 
as he saw them on the occasion of one of his later 
visits to the city of his birth and boyhood, Henry 
James wrote: 

" The best thing in the picture, obviously, is 
Saint Gaudens's great group, splendid in its 
golden elegance and doing more for the scene 
(by thus giving the beholder a point of such dig- 
nity for his orientation) than all its other elements 
together. Strange and seductive for any lover of 
the reasons of things this inordinate value, on 
the spot, of dauntless refinement of the Sherman 
image; the comparative vulgarity of the environ- 
ment drinking it up, on one side, like an insatiable 
sponge, and yet failing at the same time to impair 
its virtue. The refinement prevails and, as it 
were, succeeds; holds its own in the medley of 
accidents, where nothing else is refined unless it be 
the amplitude of the ' quiet ' note in the front of 
the Metropolitan Club; amuses itself, in short, 
with being as extravagantly ' intellectual ' as it 
likes. Why, therefore, given the surrounding 
medium, does it so triumphantly impose itself, 
and impose itself not insidiously and gradually, 
but immediately and with force? Why does it 
not pay the penalty of expressing an idea and 
being founded on one? — such scant impunity seem- 
ing usually to be enjoyed among us, at this hour, 
by any artistic intention of the finer strain? But 

-i-295-i- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

I put these questions only to give them up — for 
what I feel beyond anything else is that Mr. 
Saint Gaudens somehow takes care of himself." 

Facing the Sherman group, in the centre of the 
square, with the Cornehus Vanderbilt house in 
the background, is the Fountain of Abundance, 
or the Puhtzer Memorial Fountain, designed by 
Karl Bitter (his last work), executed by Isidore 
Konti, and erected in 1915 to the memory of the 
late Joseph Puhtzer, for many years proprietor 
of the New York "World." The structure is 
surmounted by the bronze figure of a nymph, 
bearing a basket laden with the fruits of the 
earth. The Vanderbilt residence which is the 
background when the Fountain is viewed from 
the north is of red brick with grey facings in the 
style of a French chateau of the sixteenth or 
seventeenth century. 



296 



CHAPTER XVIII 

Stretches of the Avenue 

Stretches of the Avenue — The Days of Squatter Kings — 
Seneca Village — " Millionaire's Row " — The Avenue Gates — 
The Soul of Central Park — Some Palaces of the Stretch — 
The Obelisk and the Metropolitan Museum — Northward 
Through Harlem. 

Here and there in the Island, far to the north, 
may be found an unblasted rock on the top of 
which is perched an unpainted shanty with a crude 
chimney spout from which smoke issues volumi- 
nously. A quarter of a century ago there were 
thousands of such shanties along the upper West 
Side. From the lofty iron height of the El. Road 
one could survey them stretching all the way 
from the Sixties to One Hundred and Sixteenth. 
On the summits the Lords of the Manors smoked 
their clay pipes in bland disregard of the world 
and its rent-collectors, and the family goats gam.- 
bolled; in the valleys the truck gardens waxed 
green and smiled luxuriously as if conscious of 
the enormous square-foot value of the land that 
they were pre-empting. But King Dynamite 
came, and the steam drill came, and the air clanged 
>vith the driving of many rivets, and the Moun- 

-i- 297 -i- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

tain Men, and their goats, and their wives, and 
their unwashed offspring, and their Lares and 
Penates went forth into the wilderness — no one 
knows just where. The days of Squatter Sov- 
ereignty had passed. 

But the Mountain men and women within the 
memory were the hardy, obstinate, unyielding sur- 
vivors, the last to cling to the strongholds in a 
region that once seemed impregnable. Before 
Central Park was laid out Fifty-ninth Street was 
the dividing line. Below, rich brown-stone ; above, 
along the country road which was then Fifth 
Avenue, a waste, squahd yet in its way pic- 
turesque, that extended almost to Mount Morris 
Park. " Here lived," " Fifth Avenue " tells us, 
" over five thousand as poverty-stricken and dis- 
reputable people as could be seen anywhere. The 
squatters' settlements in the Park were surrounded 
by swamps, and overgrown with briers, vines, and 
thickets. The soil that covered the rocky surface 
was unfit for cultivation. Here and there were 
stone quarries and stagnant pools. In this wilder- 
ness lived the squatters, in Httle shanties and huts 
made of boards picked up along the river fronts 
and often pieced out with sheets of tin, obtained 
by flattening cans. Some occupants paid ten 
dollars and twenty-five dollars rent, but the ma- 
jority paid nothing. Three stone buildings, two 
brick buildings, eighty-five or ninety frame houses, 

"<- 298 -»- 



STRETCHES OF THE AVENUE 

one rope-walk and about two hundred shanties, 
barns, stables, piggeries, and bone-factories, ap- 
pear in a census made just before Central Park 
was begun. Some of the shanties were dug-outs, 
and most had dirt floors. In this manner lived, 
in a state of loose morality, Americans, Germans, 
Irish, Negroes, and Indians. Some were honest 
and some were not; many were roughs and crooks. 
Much of their food was refuse, which they pro- 
cured in the lower portion of the city, and carried 
along Fifth Avenue to their homes in small carts 
drawn by dogs. The mongrel dogs were a re- 
markable feature of squatter life, and it is said 
that the Park area contained no less than one 
hundred thousand ' curs of low degree,' which, 
with cows, pigs, cats, goats, geese, and chickens, 
roamed at will, and lived upon the refuse, which 
was everywhere. In the neighbourhood of these 
squatter settlements, of which the largest was 
Seneca Village, near Seventy-ninth Street, the 
swamps had become cesspools and the air was 
odoriferous and sickening." 

Those hovels of yesterday have made way for 
the beautiful Park and the superb mansions that 
have earned for the eastern stretch of Fifth 
Avenue overlooking the Park the title of " Mil- 
lionaire's Row." There is one impression of the 
" Row " which one is bound to take away whether 
the point of observation be the top of a passing 

-J- 299 -e- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

omnibus or the sidewalk adjoining the stone wall 
guarding the boundaries of the Park. That is 
of a mysterious unreality, due, perhaps to the 
shades being always lowered and the curtains 
tightly drawn. In considerable excitement an 
immaculately garbed little old gentleman was one 
day seen to descend hurriedly from the Imperiale 
of the snorting monster by which he had designed 
to travel down to Washington Square. On the 
sidewalk, flourishing his cane, he pointed in the 
direction of a stately palace of white marble. " It 
is incredible," he kept repeating, " but I certainly 
saw some one come out of that house. I am the 
original New Yorker, and I know the thing has 
never happened before." 

As the great lane beyond Fifty-ninth Street 
is known as " Millionaire's Row," it could have 
no more appropriate guarding outpost than the 
Metropolitan Club, more generally called the 
" Millionaire's Club." The organization was 
founded in 1891 by members of the Union Club, 
and the present white marble club-house, at the 
north-east corner of Sixtieth Street, on land 
formerly owned by the Duchess of Marlborough, 
was erected in 1903. The gate to the Park diag- 
onally across from the club, at Fifty-ninth Street 
and Fifth Avenue, is the Scholars' Gate. The 
other gates along the stretch of the Avenue are 
the Students' Gate, at Sixty-fourth Street, the 

-J- 300 -J- 



STRETCHES OF THE AVENUE 

Children's Gate, at Seventy-second Street, the 
Miners' Gate, at Seventy-ninth Street, the En- 
gineers' Gate, at Ninetieth Street, the Wood- 
man's Gate, at Ninety-sixth Street, and the Girls' 
Gate, at One Hundred and Second Street. 

" Park hfe with us," writes Miss Henderson, 
" has perhaps become obsolete ; our national 
breathlessness cannot brook this paradox of pas- 
toral musings within sight and sound and smell 
of the busy lure of money making. Within its 
gates we pass into a new element ; and this element 
is antipathetic to the one-sided development im- 
posed by city hfe. Instead of resting us, it pre- 
sents a problem, and the last thing for which we 
now have time is abstract thought. And so we 
prefer the dazzling, twinkling, clashing, clamor- 
ing, death-dealing, sinking, eruptive, insistent 
Broadway, where every blink of the eye catches 
a new impression, where the brain becomes a 
passive, palpitating receptacle for ideas which 
are shot into it through all the senses; and where, 
between ' stepping lively ' and ' watching your 
step,' a feat of contradictoriness only equalled in 
its exaction by the absorbing exercise of slapping 
with one hand and rubbing with the other, inde- 
pendent thought becomes an extinct function." 

Perhaps. These may be the doubts of the 
grown-ups and the sophisticated. Meditate thus 
cantering along the bridle-path or lolling back 

-i- 301 -^ 



FIFTH AVENUE 

in the tonneau of the motor-car that has come 
to replace the stately, absurd horse-drawn equip- 
age of yesterday. Survey with ennui. Brood 
over unpatriotic comparisons. Paraphrase Lau- 
rence Sterne to the extent of mumbling how 
" they order this matter much better in Hyde 
Park or in the Bois de Boulogne." Quote Mr. 
Henry James about " the blistered sentiers of 
asphalt, the rock-bound caverns, the huge iron 
bridges spanning little muddy lakes, the whole, 
crowded, cockneyfied place." In that way jaun- 
diced happiness lies. But the soul of Central 
Park is not for you. Once upon a time there 
was a Central Park. The approaches to it were 
along sedate avenues or by restful side streets. 
When the Park was reached there were donkeys 
to ride, and donkey-boys, highly amusing in their 
cynicism and worldly knowledge, in attendance. 
The " rock -work " caverns were in fancy of an 
amazing vastness, and the abode of goblins, elves, 
gnomes, enchanted knights, persecuted princesses 
— all the creatures of delightful Fairyland. A 
certain dark, winding, apparently endless tunnel 
was the Valley of the Shadow of Death of John 
Bunyan's allegory. On the sward before the 
entrance Christian grappled with Apollyon: "And 
Apollyon, espying his opportunitij , began to 
gather up close to Christian, and wrestling with 
him, gave him a dreadfid fall; and with that 

-<- 302 -J- 



STRETCHES OF THE AVENUE 

Christian's sword flew out of his hand. Then 
said Apollyon, I am sure of thee now. And with 
that he had almost pressed him to death; so that 
Christian began to despair of life. But, as God 
would have it, while Apollyon was fetching of 
his last blow, thereby to make an end of this good 
man. Christian nimbly reached out his hand for 
his sword, and caught it, saying. Rejoice not 
against me, O mine enemy; when I fall, I shall 
arise; and with that gave him a deadly thrust, 
which made him give back, as one that had re- 
ceived his mortal wound. Christian perceiving 
that, made at him again, saying. Nay, in all these 
things we are more than conquerors through Him 
that loved us. And with that Apollyon spread 
forth his dragon wings, and sped him away, that 
Christian saw him no more.'' 

"And Christian saw him no more!" With 
the thrill that those words bring the years fall 
away and again a boy's eyes are wide in wonder 
at the mystery of the world. Then the lake. It 
was not muddy to the gaze of youth. Instead, 
it was of a crystal clearness that sparkled in the 
summer sunshine, and the ride in the swan-boats 
was a joyous adventure, just as it was a little 
later to the little girls who owed it to the knightly 
bounty of Mr. Cortlandt Van Bibber. And what 
was better than the hours in the Menagerie, when 
the antics of the monkeys provoked side-splitting 

-+- 303 -h 



FIFTH AVENUE 

laughter, and to stand steady close before the 
cage when the lions stretched and roared was to 
feel the thrill of a young Tartarin? "Now, this 
is something like a hunt!" Times change, and 
conditions change, and aspects change, but it is 
we who change most of all, and Romance is still 
there, given the eyes of youth with which to see 
it. 

But back to our sheep and to the Avenue. At 
the south-east corner of Sixty-second Street is 
the Knickerbocker Club, which moved there a few 
years ago from the home it held so long at the 
Avenue and Thirty-second Street, but before it 
is reached are passed the residences of Mrs. J. A. 
Bostwick (800), Mrs. Fitch Gilbert (801), Wil- 
liam Emlen Roosevelt (804), and William Lan- 
man Bull (805). On Sixty-second Street, near 
the Knickerbocker, is the house of the late Joseph 
H. Choate. Continuing along the Avenue to 
Sixty-eighth Street the residences are: Mrs. Ham- 
ilton Fish (810), Francis L. Loring (811), 
George G. McMurty (813), Robert L. Gerry 
(816), Clifford V. Brokaw (825), Henry Mor- 
timer Brooks (826), William Guggenheim (833), 
Frank Jay Gould (834), Frederick Lewisohn 
(835), Mrs. Isadore Wormser (836), Mrs. Wil- 
liam Watts Sherman (838), Vincent Astor (840), 
Mrs. Henry O. Havemeyer, south-east corner 
of Sixty-sixth (No. 3 East Sixty-sixth is the 

4-304-e- 



n 




THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, ON THE SITE OF 
WHAT WAS ONCE THE DEER PARK. HAD ITS ORIGIN 
IN A MEETING OF THE ART COMMITTEE OF THE UNION 
LEAGUE CLUB IN NOVEMBER, 1869 



STRETCHES OF THE AVENUE 

former home of General Grant), Miss Elizabeth 
Kean (844), George Barney Schley (845), the 
late Colonel Oliver H. Payne (852), George 
Grant Mason (854), Perry Behnont (855), 
Judge Elbert H. Gary (856), George J. Gould 
(857), and Thomas F. Ryan (858). 

At this point begins what prior to 1840 was 
the farm of Robert Lenox, extending on to what 
is now Seventy-third Street. The uncle of Robert 
Lenox was a British commissary during the Revo- 
lution. The farm, which is worth at the present 
day perhaps ten million dollars, was bought in the 
twenties of the last century for forty thousand 
dollars. Under the various sections of his will 
which bear the dates of 1829, 1832, and 1839, 
Lenox, or " Lennox " as it was then spelled, 
devised his farm, then comprising about thirty 
acres, to his only son, James, with his stock of 
horses, cattle, and farming utensils, during the 
term of his life and after his death, to James's 
heirs forever. The will reads : " My motive for 
so leaving this property is a firm persuasion that 
it may, at no distant date, be the site of a village, 
and as it cost me more than its present worth, 
from circumstances known to my family, I will to 
cherish that behef that it may be realized to them. 
At all events, I want the experiment made by 
keeping the property from being sold." Under 
a clause in the will dated 1832, however, he with- 

-j-305-i- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

drew the restriction covering the sale of the farm, 
but, nevertheless, urged his son not to sell it, as 
he was still of the firm conviction that some day 
there would be a village near by, and the prop- 
erty would appreciate. It was the son James 
Lenox who erected the Lenox Library, which was 
a conspicuous mark on the upper Avenue until it 
was merged with the Astor in the formation of 
the present Public Library. The Lenox Library 
antedated by some years the Metropolitan Mu- 
seum of Art. It was designed by Richard Morris 
Hunt, who died in 1893, and whose Memorial, 
the work of Daniel Chester French, is on the edge 
of the opposite Park. 

The site of the old Library is now occupied by 
the house of Mr. Henry C. Frick, one of the 
great show residences of the Avenue and the city. 
Beautiful as it unquestionably is, the veriest lay- 
man is conscious of the fact that, for the full 
effect, a longer approach is needed. A broad 
garden separates the house, which is eighteenth- 
century English, from the sidewalk. The gallery, 
the low wing at the upper corner, with lunettes 
in sculpture by Sherry Fry, Phillip Martiny, 
Charles Keck, and Attilio Piccirilli, contams 
pictures by Titian, Paul Veronese, Velasquez, 
Murillo, Van Dyck, Franz Hals, Rembrant, 
Daubigny, Corot, Diaz, Manet, Millet, Rousseau, 
Troyon, Constable, Gainsborough, Lawrence, Rae- 

4-306 -J- 



STRETCHES OF THE AVENUE 

burn, Reynolds, Romney, Turner, and Whistler. 
The chief artistic feature of the interior decora- 
tions of the house, which, with the land upon 
which it is placed, cost, in round figures, five 
millions of dollars, is the famous series of 
Fragonard Panels, in the drawing-room. Painted 
originally for the chere amie of Louis the Fif- 
teenth, they are known as the Du Barry Panels, 
despite the fact that the fair lady did not find 
them quite satisfactory and the artist placed them 
in his own home on the shores of the Medi- 
terranean. 

But before the Frick residence is reached there 
are the houses of Harry Payne Whitney (871) 
at the north-east corner of Sixty-eighth Street, 
Mrs. Joseph Stickney (874), Henry J. Topping 
(875), Frances Burton Harrison (876), Mrs. 
Ogden Mills (878), Mrs. E. H. Harriman (880), 
and Mrs. Wilham E. S. Griswold (883). Just 
beyond are Mrs. Abercrombie Burden (898), 
James A. Burden (900), John W. Sterling 
(912), Samuel Thorne (914), Nicholas F. 
Palmer (922), George Henry Warren (924), 
Mrs. Herbert Leslie Terrell (925), John Wood- 
ruff Simpson (926), Simeon B. Chapin (930), 
Mortimer L. Schiff (932), Lamon V. Harkness 
(933), Alfred M. Hoyt (934), and Edwin Gould 
(936). Then, at Seventy-sixth Street, is the 
Temple Beth-El, which was completed in 1891, 

-h- 307 -h 



FIFTH AVENUE 

and wliich represents the first German-Jewish 
congregation in this country, dating back to 
1826. The dwelling houses that come next 
belong to Mrs. Samuel W. Bridgham (954), 
and J. Horace Harding (955). Then, at the 
northeast corner of Seventy-seventh Street, is 
the famous house of Senator W. A. Clark, 
reputed to have been built at a cost of fif- 
teen million dollars. Beyond, Charles F. Die- 
trich (963), Mrs. George H. Butler (964), 
Jacob H. Schiff (965), WiUiam V. Lawrence 
(969), the James B. Duke house with its simple 
lines at the Seventy-eighth Street corner, Payne 
Whitney (972), Isaac D. Fletcher (977), How- 
ard C. Brokaw (984), Irving Brokaw (985), 
William J. Curtis (986), Walter Lewisohn (987), 
Hugh A. Murray (988), Nicholas F. Brady 
(989), Frank W. Woolworth (990), D. Craw- 
ford Clark (991), E. D. Faulkner (992), Mrs. 
Hugo Reisinger (993) — there is an apartment 
house at 998 where the rents are so high that it is 
popularly known as the " Millionaires Apart- 
ments " — Mrs. Henry G. Timmerman (1007), 
Angier B. Duke (1009), J. Francis A. Clark 
(1013), Senator George B. Peabody Wetmore 
(1015), Mrs. W. M. Kingland (1026), and 
George Crawford Clark (1027). 

This part of the Avenue faces the Obelisk, 
Cleopatra's Needle, a present to the United States 

-J- 308 -J- 



STRETCHES OF THE AVENUE 

from the Khedive of Egypt, brought to this 
country in 1877, and erected here in 1880; and 
the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the latter on 
the site of what was once the Deer Park. The 
Museum had its origin in a meeting of the art 
committee of the Union League Club in November, 
1869. Among the founders were Wilham Cullen 
Bryant, president of the Century Association, 
Daniel Huntington, president of the National 
Academy of Design, Dr. Barnard, president of 
Columbia, Richard M. Hunt, president of the New 
York chapter of the American Institute of Archi- 
tects, and Dr. Henry W. Bellows. Andrew H. 
Green, the " Father of Greater New York," who 
was one of those representing the city, was the 
first to suggest placing the Museum in the Park. 
For a time the collection was kept in a house 
rented for the purpose in West Fourteenth Street. 
The first wing of the present building was opened 
in 1880. 

To continue the list of the private residences 
of the Avenue. Jonathan Thorne (1028), Louis 
Gordon Hammersley (1030), Countess Annie 
Leary (1032), George C. Smith (1033), Herbert 
D. Robbins (1034), James B. Clews (1039), 
Lloyd Warren (1041), Mrs. James Hedges 
(1044), R. F. Hopkins (1045), Michael Dricer 
(1046), George Leary (1053), Wilham H. Er- 
hart (1055), James Speyer (1058), Henry 

-*-309-i- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

Phipps (1063), Abraham Stein (1068), Dr. 
James H. Lancashire (1069), Mrs. Herbert T. 
Parsons (1071), W. W. Fuller (1072), J. H. 
Hanan (1073), Benjamin Duke (1076), Mal- 
cokn D. Whitman (1080), McLane Van Ingen 
(1081), A. M. Huntington (1083). 

In the block between Ninetieth and Ninety-first 
Streets, on land where once the squatter gloried, 
is the home of the Iron Master, perhaps of all 
the residences in the long line of the Avenue the 
one most observed by the stranger within our 
gates. " So weU have the architect and the land- 
scape gardener co-operated," is the comment of 
" Fifth Avenue," " that this mansion and its sur- 
roundings have already the dignity and pic- 
turesqueness which age alone can give, although 
the building is of comparatively recent date. It 
is the only house on all Fifth Avenue which looks 
as if it might have been transplanted from old 
England." The Carnegie house is almost the 
outpost to the north of " Millionaire's Row." 
Two blocks beyond, after the I. Townsend Burden 
house, and the Warburg house, and the Willard 
D. Straight house have been passed, we are once 
more in the region of unprepossessing chaos. Be- 
tween Ninety-third Street and the end of the Park 
there is a riot of hideous signboards, and vacant 
lots, and lots that though occupied, are unadorned. 
The only relief in the unpleasant picture is the 



STRETCHES OF THE AVENUE 

Mount Sinai Hospital at One Hundredth Street. 
In name at least the Avenue marches on, its 
progress being suspended for a space where 
Mount Morris Park rises to the summit of the 
Snag Berg, or Snake Hill, where, in the days of 
the Revolution, a Continental battery for a mo- 
ment commanded the valley of the Harlem, only 
to be whisked away, when the enemy came, and 
a Hessian battery was installed in its place. But 
where the stretch of magnificence breaks, although 
it continues to be Fifth Avenue in name, it ceases 
to be Fifth Avenue in spirit. 



311 



CHAPTER XIX 

Mine Host on the Avenue 

Mine Host on the Avenue — A Gentleman of Brussels — 
Poulard's — Some Old New York Hotels — High Prices of 
1836— The American— The Metropolitan— Holt's— The Bre- 
voort and the Steamship Captains — Delmonico's — Famous 
Menus — The Glory of the Fifth Avenue — The Logerot — A 
Bohemian Chop-house — The Great Mince Pie Contest — About 
Madison Square — Lost Youth. 

Is there anything that civihzed man recalls more 
poignantly than the menus of yesterday? Of the 
Brussels of the winter of 1917, the last winter 
that the Americans of the Commission for Relief 
were allowed to remain, I have many vivid mem- 
ories. One of them is of a crowd gathered before 
a shop-window in the Rue de Namur, a street that 
winds down from the circle of boulevards to the 
Place Royale. Within, the object of hungry 
curiositj^ a fowl, adorned by a placard informing 
that the price is forty-four francs. Conspicuous 
in the crowd, his face pressed against the glass 
of the etalage, a Httle old gentleman. The bowl 
of municipal soup and the loaf of bread are all 
that he has to look forward to as the day's sus- 
tenance. But as he gazes his mouth waters quiv- 
eringly, and for the moment the grey-green uni- 

-j-312-i- 



MINE HOST ON THE AVENUE 

forms of the invaders that are all about him, and 
the hated flag that is flying over the Palais de 
Justice are forgotten. Soon he will go home and 
sit down and write a letter to La Belgique, in 
which he will recall the happier days, and tell of 
how one once was able to dine at the Taverne 
Royale for the sum of two francs, fifty, or three 
francs, fifty, enumerating carefully and lovingly 
the various courses. His letter, and others of 
similar nature and inspiration, were the only gen- 
uine letters that the occupying military authori- 
ties allowed to appear in the Belgian press. 

But a world tragedy was not needed to invest 
with romance the menus of yesterday. A memory 
of youth is the rock of Mont St. Michel on the 
French coast. The name suggests a towering, 
isolated height in the ocean, close to the mouth 
of the river dividing Normandy from Brittany, 
surrounded at high tide by lashing waves, and at 
low tide by a muddy morass, save where a cause- 
way joins it to the mainland. The monks of St. 
Michel sent ships to help convey the armies of 
William to Hastings, and when the yoke of the 
Normans on England was young two sons of the 
Conqueror waged battle here, and Henry be- 
sieged Robert or Robert besieged Henry. When 
Philip Augustus burned it and it was the only 
Norman fortress that withstood Henry the Fifth, 
and many years later, in Maupassant's " Notre 



FIFTH AVENUE 

Coeur," a certain Madame de Burne entered a 
room of one of its hotels and there blew out a 
candle. But above all I recall, and ninety-five 
out of every hundred others who have visited the 
rock recall, the breakfast that was once renowned 
throughout Europe — a breakfast at two francs, 
fifty, brought to perfection for the reason that it 
was always the same, the shrimps, the cutlets, the 
chicken, and the amazing omelette, which the 
portly Madame Poulard prepared in full view, 
tossing it like a flapjack, to a chorus of dehghted 
"Ahsl" 

There is no need to go far afield. There is 
the older ISTew York, with its memories of Mine 
Host of oyster-bar and chop-house, of culinary 
joys and the ghosts of viands. Yesterday the 
personality of the landlord was more in evidence 
and that of his staff happily less so. Mine Host 
was an individual and not yet a corporation. He 
oozed welcome. He walked from table to table, 
bland, smiling, eager for commendation, keen- 
eared for criticism. Although paid for, it was 
none the less his hospitahty that was being dis- 
pensed, and he was acutely sensitive to apprecia- 
tion. His retainers were fewer in number and 
were retainers only. Then, from the Spanish 
Main the last of the pirates disappeared, bequeath- 
ing to their descendants the tables and hat-stands 
of the hostelries of Fifth Avenue and the Great 

-J- 314! -J- 



MINE HOST ON THE AVENUE 

White Way. There they are today, insolent- 
eyed and " walk-the-plank " mannered to all but 
the few whom they feel they can hold to high 
ransom. To those of us who do not belong to 
that few of the race of Dives there is satisfaction 
in turning over the old bills-of-fare, and musing 
on the repasts that were once within the reach of 
the purses of the humble. 

When Horace Greeley arrived in New York 
in 1831, he had ten dollars in his pocket and 
knew no one in the city. He entered a tavern. 
The bartender looked him over superciliously. 
" We are too high for you. We charge six a 
week." Horace agreed with him, and found 
shelter in a boarding-house where he paid two 
dollars and a half a week. Occasionally, when 
the table there palled, he and the other boarders 
sought a change by repairing to a Sixpenny 
Dining Saloon in Beekman Street where a splen- 
did feast was to be had for a shilling (twelve and 
a half cents ) . 

Two years after Horace Greeley arrived in 
New York Holt's Hotel opened its doors. It was 
the wonder of the town, the largest and most 
magnificent inn erected up to that time. Even 
by rich people its prices were thought exorbitant. 
They were one dollar and a half a day. That, of 
course, meant the American plan. Even the panic 
years, from 1835 to 1837, when prices soared in 

•4-315-^ 



FIFTH AVENUE 

a manner that brought consternation to the breasts 
of careful housekeepers, do not very much startle 
us who are living in the present Anno Domini 
1918. PhiHp Hone, in his "Diary," wrote of 
living in New York in 1835 as exorbitantly dear, 
and went on to say: "it falls pretty hard on 
persons like me who live upon their incomes, and 
harder still upon that large and respectable class 
whose support is derived from fixed salaries." 
The sweat of the brow of New York all ran into 
the pockets of the farmers. Hone laid in a winter 
stock of butter at twenty-nine cents a pound. 
" In the course of thirty-four years housekeeping 
I have never buttered my bread at so extravagant 
a rate." In March, 1836, he recorded: "The 
market was higher this morning than I have ever 
known it. Beef, twenty-five cents; mutton and 
veal, fifteen to eighteen; small turkeys, one dollar 
and a half. Poor New York! " 

A few years later and the prices were back to 
what was then held to be normal. According to 
a Guide Book of the city issued in 1846, there 
were one hundred and twenty-three eating-houses 
in the town, besides the oyster-houses. At the 
cheaper places the prices were six cents a plate 
of meats and three cents a plate of vegetables. In 
the more pretentious restaurants the rates were 
of course considerably higher. Chamberlain's 
Saloon in Pearl Street was a famous restaurant 

^-316-^- 



MINE HOST ON THE AVENUE 

in 1851. Here is its advertised bill-of-fare. 
Soups: beef, mutton, chicken, six cents; roast pig, 
turkey, goose, chicken, duck, twelve and a half 
cents; beef, lamb, pork, mutton, six cents; beef- 
steak pie, lamb pie, mutton pie, clam pie, six 
cents; boiled beef, any kind, six cents. Made 
dishes: pork and beans, veal pie, six cents; oyster 
pie, chicken pot-pie, twelve and a half cents. 

Phihp Hone lived in a house on Broadway, 
facing City Hall Park. When he wished to dine 
out he did not have to go far, for almost next 
door was the American Hotel, one of the most 
famous hostelries of the period. Its cooking was 
as sturdily patriotic as its name, although the 
menu is flavoured with badly written French. 
Here is a sample bill-of-fare, bearing the date of 
June 10, 1848. 



Soup. 
Rice Soup. 

Fish. 
Blackfish. 
Boiled. 
Leg of Mutton. 
Fowl, oyster sauce. 
Corn beef. 
Ham, Tongue, Lobsters. 
Entrees. 
Fricassee of chicken, a la New York. 
Tete de Veau en Tortue. 

Cotellettes de mouton, saute aux pommes. 
Filet de veau, pique a la Macedoine. 
Tendon d'Agneau, puree au navets. 
Fois de volaille, sautee, a la Bordelaise. 
Croquettes de pommes de terre. 

-i-. 317 -J- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

Stewed oysters, 
Boeuf bouilli, sauce piquante. 
Macaroni a I'ltallienne. 
Roast. 
Beef, Veal, Lamb, mint sauce, Chicken, Duck. 
Vegetables. 
Mashed potatoes. Asparagus. 

Spinach. Rice. 

Turnips. Pears. 

Pastry. 
Rice custard. Roman punch. 

Pies. Tarts, etc. 

Dessert. 
Strawberries and cream. Almonds. 

Raisins. Walnuts, etc. 

The day came when the hotels farther down- 
town yielded the palm to the Metropolitan, opened 
in the middle fifties at Broadway and Prince 
Street. The late Alfred Henry Lewis thus 
rhetorically pictured the Metropolitan, in the 
winter of 1857-58, when to dine there was the 
thing to do. " Over near a window are Bayard 
Taylor, the poet Stoddard, and Boker, who wrote 
' Francesca da Rimini,' which Miss Juha Dean is 
playing at Wallack's. Beyond them is Edmund 
Clarence Stedman, with lawyers David Dudley 
Field and Charles O'Connor. The second table 
from the door is claimed by Sparrow Grass Coz- 
zens and Fitz-James O'Brien, who have adjourned 
from Pfaff's beer-cellar near Leonard Street, 
where, under the Broadway sidewalk, they were 
quaffing lager and getting up quite an appetite 
on onions, pretzels, and cheese. They have with 



MINE HOST ON THE AVENUE 

them Walt Whitman, who, silent and wholly 
wanting in that barbaric yawp, is distinguished by 
what William Dean Howells, ever slopping over 
in his phrase-making, will one day speak of as his 
* branching beard and Jovian hair.' The theatres 
have a place in the Leland cafe, and that dark, 
thin-faced scimetar-nosed Jewish woman, who 
coughs a great deal, is the French actress, Rachel. 
She has been playing at the New York Theatre, 
and caught a cold on that overventilated stage, as 
open to the winds as a sawmill, which will kill 
her within a year. With her are the singer, 
Brignoli, and that man of orchestras, Theodore 
Thomas. The sepulchral Herman Melville enters, 
and saunters funereally across to Taylor, Stod- 
dard, and Boker. Rachel and Brignoli are talk- 
ing of the operatic failure at the Academy of 
Music under Manager Payne. They speak, too, 
of Mrs. Wood's success at Wallack's, and of 
Burton's reopening of the old Laura Keene The- 
atre, in Broadway across from Bond. Thomas 
mentions the accident at Niblo's the other evening, 
when Pauline Genet, of the Revel troupe, was so 
savagely burned. Speculation enlists O'Connor, 
Stedman, and Field, and Field is prophesying 
impending money troubles, which prophecies the 
panic six months away will largely bear out." 

Then, quietly at first, but none the less surely, 
Fifth Avenue began to play its part to the town 



FIFTH AVENUE 

and to the visiting stranger. 'Now that the Astor 
House and the old Fifth Avenue Hotel are gone 
it is to the Brevoort, or the Lafayette-Brevoort, 
just as you choose to call it, that one turns to 
find the ghosts of yesterday. They are nothing 
to shy at, being comfortable, well-fed spirits, 
compositely cosmopolitan. For legend has it that 
the management in the old days was particularly 
gracious to the captains of the transatlantic 
steamers when they were in this port, and the 
seamen were correspondingly appreciative. So 
as the vessel was passing the Nantucket Light- 
ship the titled Englishman bound for the 
Canadian Rockies to hunt big game, or the French 
banker, seeking first-hand information about 
values in mines or railroads, or the Neapolitan 
tenor about to fill an engagement at the Academy 
of Music, turned to the captain for advice as to 
where to stay during the sojourn in New York, 
the Briton, or the Gaul, or the Italian was likely 
to hear such a flattering account of the comfort 
of the Brevoort and the excellence of its cuisine, 
that any previous suggestions were promptly for- 
gotten. In the old-time novels of New York 
visiting Englishmen in particular always 
" stopped " at the Brevoort. It would have been 
heresy on the part of the novelist to have sent 
them elsewhere. Nor can any blame be attached 
to romancer or steamship captain. It was always 

-f-320-i- 



MINE HOST ON THE AVENUE 

a good hotel, but in the old days it had not yet 
been invaded by those who hke to play at Bo- 
hemia. 

Delmonico's has had many incarnations since 
the day when the brothers, Peter and John, estab- 
lished themselves in the humble basement at No. 
27 WiUiam Street, back in 1827. First there was 
the move to 76 Broad Street, and then to Broad- 
way and Chambers Street. But to that genera- 
tion of New Yorkers of which only a few remain, 
there has been only one great Delmonico's, the 
one which in 1861 opened its doors at the north- 
east corner of Fourteenth Street and Fifth 
Avenue. It was the centre of the town in the 
sixties and early seventies. Two blocks away was 
the Academy of Music, the Metropolitan Opera 
House of the time, and Fourteenth Street was 
burgeoning out as the new Rialto. Society set 
its seal upon the establishment. The clubs of the 
immediate neighbourhood, of which there were 
several, did not think it necessary to install 
cuisines when Delmonico's was so close at hand. 
The name of the house is still a byword in the 
land, but the names of Fihppini and Lattard, two 
of the mmtre d'hotel who helped to make Del- 
monico's famous, have been forgotten by all but 
a very few. What supper parties were given in 
the old estabhshment, and what dances of that 
exclusive circle to which Mr. Ward McAllister 

H-321-i- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

was later to give the sticking designation of the 
" Four Hundred," before the house again marched 
on northward to Madison Square, and a rug-man 
installed himself and his wares in the halls that 
had been the scene of such good cheer and so 
much well-bred revelry! 

M. de Balzac, planning to entertain a Russian 
nobleman at the Restaurant de Paris, asked the 
management to " put its best foot forward " for 
the occasion. " Certainly, Monsieur," was the 
retort, " for the simple reason that it is what we 
are in the habit of doing every day." Old-time 
patrons of the Fourteenth Street corner will tell 
you that such a reply might have fittingly come 
from the maitre dfhotel of the " Del's " that was. 
But conceding the quality of the everyday service 
there were famous dinners that have stood out 
in the annals of the house. Here, for example, 
is the menu of what was known as the " Swan 
Dinner " held the evening of February 17, 1873. 



Potages. 

Consomme Imperial. Bisque aux crevettes. 

Hor d'oeuvres. 

Timbales a la Conde. 

Poissons. 

Red Snapper a la Venetienne. 

Eperlan, sauce des gourmets. 

Releve. 

Filet de boeuf a la I'Egyptienne. 

Entrees. 

Ailes de canvas back, sauce bigurade. 

Cotellettes de volaille Sevigne. 

-*-322-i- 



MINE HOST ON THE AVENUE 

Asperges froide en branche. 

Sorbet a I'Ermitage. 

Rotis. 

Chapon truifes. Selle de mouton. 

Entremets. 

Choufleurs, sauce creme. Carbons a la moelle. 

Petits pois au beurre. 

Poires a la Richelieu. 

Gelee aux ananas. Gaufres Chantilly Sultanne. 

Gateaux a la Reine. Coupole a I'Anglaise. 

Pain de peche Marechale. Gelee au fruits. 

Dessert. 

Delicieux aux noisettes. Biscuit Tortoni. 

Fruit glaces. 

Petit fours. Bonbons. 

Pieces montes. 

The musty inn of mid-Europe will boast till the 
end of time of the two-hour visit within its walls 
of a certain Elector and his suite in the year 
sixteen hundred and something or seventeen 
hundred and something. There is not a hos- 
telry in England dating back to Tudor times 
without a bed in which Queen Elizabeth is reputed 
to have slept. But for famous guests, authen- 
tically established, there is probably no other hotel 
in the world that is to be compared to the Fifth 
Avenue. When the boyish Prince of Wales 
played leap-frog in its corridors at the time of 
his visit to the United States in 1860, he began 
a distinguished procession. Every president of 
the nation from the day the hotel was opened 
until it closed at some time stayed there. That 
meant Lincoln, Johnson, Grant, Hayes, Garfield, 
Arthur, Cleveland, McKinley, and Roosevelt. At 

-e-323-J- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

the time of Grant's funeral in August, 1885, the 
immediate family, the relatives. President Cleve- 
land, Vice-President Hendricks, former Presi- 
dents Hayes and Arthur, the members of the 
Senate, the House of Representatives, and the 
Supreme Court, the Diplomatic Corps, and the 
Governors of the various States were all guests 
of the hotel. Not only did great men stay there, 
but they did things there. It was at the Peabody 
dinner at the Fifth Avenue that the movement 
to nominate Grant for President started. In 
1880, after his nomination, Garfield, at the solici- 
tation of Arthur, came all the way from Mentor 
to meet Roscoe Conkling. But the haughty and 
powerful Conkling would not see him. If the 
hotel had not been the recognized shelter of visit- 
ing Republican statesmen in New York it is rea- 
sonably certain that Tilden, instead of Hayes, 
would have occupied the White House from 1877 
to 1881, for it was there that a rescue of the 
Republican candidate was set on foot in 1876 
after he had been given up as lost. In one of 
the parlours of the hotel the ill-advised Dr. S. A. 
Burchard doomed Blaine to defeat when he said: 
" We are Republicans, and we do not intend to 
leave our party to identify ourselves with a party 
whose antecedents have been Rum, Romanism, 
and Rebellion." 

Today it would be hard to find a hotel below 
-i- 324 -+• 



MINE HOST ON THE AVENUE 

Forty-second Street that still continues on what 
is known as the American plan. But when the 
Fifth Avenue was young that system of prices 
was supposed to embody the national spirit of 
democracy. Yet the idea had its wise critics, who 
found in it a certain injustice. For example 
there was an editorial on the subject, apropos 
of the Fifth Avenue, in the issue of October 1, 
1859, soon after the hotel was opened, which ran, 
in part: "In the first place, what can be more 
preposterous than to establish a fixed rate of fare 
at hotels? Big, fat, bloated, blustering Guzzle 
goes to the Astor House for a week, and, in virtue 
of his standing and his paunch, gets a room near 
the dining saloon — a large, airy room looking 
on the Park, with lounge, arm-chairs, pier-glasses, 
Brussels carpet, and other furniture, all rich and 
luxurious; at dinner he eats pate de fois gras and 
woodcock, at supper he has elaborate little dishes 
which exercise an experienced cook for an hour 
or two, at breakfast he has salmon at fifty cents 
a pound, for all of which Guzzle pays two dollars 
and a half a day. The Rev. John Jones has a 
cup of weak tea for his breakfast, a slice of beef 
for his dinner, and a room under the tiles, and 
pays the same two dollars and a half." Perhaps 
there was a little exaggeration in the Harper 
editorial. But judge of Guzzle's opportunities 
from the following menu of the first dinner served 

-J- 325 -f- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

by the Fifth Avenue, that of Tuesday, August 23, 
1859. 

Soups. 

Green Turtle. Barley. 

Fish. 

Boiled Salmon, shrimp sauce. Baked Bass, wine sauce. 

Boiled. 

Leg of Mutton, caper sauce. Chicken, with pork. 

Calf's Head, brain sauce. Beef tongue. 

Turkey, oyster sauce. Corn Beef and Cabbage. 

Cold Dishes. 

Ham, Roast Beef, Pressed Corn Beef, Tongue, Ham. 

Lobster Salad. Boned Turkey with truffles. 

Entrees. 
Fricasseed Chicken a la Chevaliere. 
Macaroni, Parmesan. 
Lamb cutlets, breaded. 
Oysters, fried in crumbs. 
Currie of Veal, in border of rice. 
Queen Fritters. 
Kidneys, champagne sauce. 
Pigeons, en compote. 
Sweetbreads, larded green peas. 
Roasts. 
Beef. Lamb, mint sauce. 

Loin of Veal, stuffed. Goose. 
Turkey. Chicken. 

Ham, champagne sauce. 
Vegetables. 
Mashed Potatoes, Boiled Potatoes. Boiled Rice. 
Baked Potatoes. Stewed Tomatoes. Squash. 
Turnips. Cabbage. Beans. 
Pastry. 
Sponge Cake Pudding. Apple Pies. 
Madeira Jelly. Peach Pies. 

Peach Meringues. Squash Pies. 

Gateaux Modernes. Cols de Cygne. 

Dessert. 
Raisins. Almonds. Peaches. English Walnuts. 
Pecan Nuts. Filberts. Bartlett Pears. 
Citron Melons. Water-melons. 
Vanilla, lemon ice-cream. 

-i-326H- 



MINE HOST ON THE AVENUE 

Considering that this was not an exceptional 
dinner, but was a sample of the fare that was 
served every day one is inclined to envy Guzzle 
and to deplore the neglected opportunities of 
the Rev. Jones. 

Below the Fifth Avenue Mine Host flourished 
yesterday. At the corner of Eighteenth Street 
there was the Logerot, sometime called Fleuret's. 
There, as at the old Martin's, at University Place 
and Ninth Street, a little play of the imagination 
enabled the diner to hug the delusion that he was 
at Foyot's, and that the gentleman with the white 
goatee at the table opposite was a Senator of 
France from the near-by Palace of the Luxem- 
bourg. After he had eaten of the monies mari- 
nieres and the escargots it was no longer imagina- 
tion, he felt sure of the fact. To stimulate 
through the palate such pleasant fancy was the 
idea of Richard de Croisac, Marquis de Logerot, 
who opened the place in 1892. When Logerot's 
passed the setting was made to serve a purpose 
ignominious, though highly laudable. It became 
an incubator shop, and tiny coloured babies 
squirmed mysteriously where once the casserole 
steamed. 

The neighbourhood is rich in gastronomical 
memories. At the same corner for twenty years 
the chop-house of John Wallace flourished. In 
the eighties it was one of the few chop-houses 

•+- 327 r«- 



FIFTH AVENUE 

uptown. There was a flavour of Bohemia about 
the chentele. Characters who were famous in 
their day but whose very names are now forgotten, 
congregated there for the steaks and kidneys and 
the ale drawn from the wood. There, so the story 
goes, was sown the seed of the Great Mince Pie 
Contest. An actor, dropping into Wallace's late 
one evening for the after-work rarebit, overheard 
fragments of an argument about the relative 
merits of the mince pies of certain of the city's 
hotels and refectories. He was playing at the 
time in the dramatization of Mr. Tarkington's 
" Monsieur Beaucaire," and the next evening he 
brought up the subject for discussion with various 
ladies and gentlemen of the company. Had it 
been a matter of lobsters he might have had an 
apathetic response. But the homely mince pie 
roused to riotous enthusiasm. Each player pro- 
tested that he or she knew of a place from which 
came a mince pie surpassing all others. So the 
contest was arranged and a jury of unimpeachable 
character selected, and two nights later the pies 
were brought proudly in and in turn sampled. 
Incidentally the winning pasty came from the old 
Ashland House at Fourth Avenue and Twenty- 
fourth Street, and its sponsor was Mr. A. G. 
(better known as "Bogey") Andrews. 

There was a family hotel called the Glenham 
on the Avenue between Twenty-first and Twenty- 

-i-328-?- 



MINE HOST ON THE AVENUE 

second Streets, and at the north-east corner of 
Twenty-second, where part of the base of the 
" Flatiron Building " now is, was the old Cum- 
berland. There was one man, at least, who ap- 
preciated the Cumberland. In fact he liked it so 
well that, when the structure was to be demolished 
to make way for the new skyscraper, he refused to 
move out, and having a lease, could not be evicted. 
So he stayed there to the last, while the bricks 
came tumbling down about his ears. Then, just 
around the corner, where Broadway joins Madison 
Square, was the Bartholdi, celebrated by the 
patronage of Mr. Fitzsimmons, alias Ruby Robert, 
the Freckled One, the Kangaroo, and beyond, 
still standing, a memento of yesterday, Dorlon's, 
uptown heir to the glories of the old Fulton 
Market place, which boasted a history that goes 
back three-quarters of a century. A relic of the 
old establishment, a mahogany table round which 
Cornelius Vanderbilt and Judge Roosevelt (the 
grandfather of T. R.), and John Jacob Astor, and 
John Swan used to sit at their oyster dinner 
consisting of oysters raw, stewed, roasted in the 
shell, and broiled, is still preserved. 

Perhaps, at night, the shades of famous dishes 
of the past come forth from remodelled walls or 
forgotten cupboards and meet in the Park to re- 
call the glories that once were. For all about 
are memories. Beyond where the Fifth Avenue 

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FIFTH AVENUE 

was was the Hoffman House where one went to 
dine as well as to feast the eyes on the twenty- 
five-thousand-dollar Bougereau of " Nymphs and 
Satyr," and "Pan and Bacchante." Then the 
Albermarle and Saint James, the Brunswick, and 
the famous south-west corner of the Avenue and 
Twenty-sixth Street. The Brunswick had its ad- 
herents, who proclaimed its table the best in New 
York, and the land once rang with a Tammany 
dinner that was held there. But that south-west 
corner. It was famous as " Del's " and it was 
famous when it was Martin's. Who that knew it 
will ever forget what was known as the " Broad- 
way Room," and the special soup for every day 
of the week, and the cuisine Russe with the plats 
du jour for luncheon and dinner, and the vodka 
that one might have if one wished? And also, 
the chestnut soup! 

If your palate of yesterday craved the exotic in 
the way of food there was the Indian Palace that 
once flourished at No. 325 Fifth Avenue. In 
1900, a Prince Ranji Something or Other, who 
claimed to be a son of the Sultan of Sulu or 
Beloochistan, opened it, establishing the first 
smoking room for women in the city. He brought 
the aspect of the East in the shape of Indians, 
and dancing girls, and jugglers, and Hindoo 
tango dancers, and flower girls, and cigarette 
girls, and music girls, all in their native costumes. 

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MINE HOST ON THE AVENUE 

There was prosperity for a time, and rich prom- 
ise, until the Prince ran against the callous, un- 
sympathetic Occident in the shape of the contract 
labour law. 

On up the Avenue as far as the Plaza, where, 
as early as 1870, " Boss " Tweed attempted to 
erect a hotel on the site of the present Nether- 
lands, the gastronomical trail of the past may be 
followed. Five years ago it was said that New 
York had more good restaurants than any city 
in the world except Paris. Today there is no 
longer the exception. In the spirit that has long 
moved the people of Marseilles to the saying: " If 
Paris had a Cannebiere it would be a Httle Mar- 
seilles," an American city has said: " Paris might 
cook as well as New Orleans if it only had New 
Orleans's markets." To an even greater arro- 
gance in its culinary past and present New York 
has a right. Turning over some of the menus 
of yesterday is recalling when the world was 
young. Lost youth is in the memory of " the 
wharves, and the slips, and the sea-tides tossing 
free; and the Spanish sailors with bearded hps, 
and the beauty and mystery of the ships, and the 
magic of the sea." It is also in the memory of 
the flavour of certain delectable, never-to-be- 
forgotten repasts. 

THE END 
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